Bio Psych Exam #2: Chp. 12

Emotions

Cognitive interpretations of subjective feelings

Motivation

Behavior that seems purposeful and goal-directed

Evolutionary explanation of behavior

Innate releasing mechanisms (IRMs)

Innate releasing mechanisms (IRMs)

•Hypothetical mechanism that detects specific sensory stimuli and directs an organism to take a particular action

•Activators of inborn adaptive responses that aid an animal’s survival

Innate Releasing Mechanism Examples:

Baby mimicking facial expressions of adult from own internal template

Evolutionary psychology

•Seeks to apply principles of natural selection to reveal causes of human behavior

•Suggests behaviors exist because the neural circuits producing them have been favored through natural selection

B. F. Skinner

•Suggested learning plays a vital role in behavior

•Posited experience shapes behavior by pairing stimuli and reinforcers.

Learned taste aversion

•Acquired association between a specific taste or odor and illness

•Leads to an aversion to foods having that taste or odor

Example: coyotes being poised by sheep

Preparedness

•Predisposition to respond to certain stimuli differently than to other stimuli

Brain is prewired to make certain types of associations but not others

_____ is the discipline that seeks to apply principles of natural selection to understand the causes of human behavior.

aEvolutionary psychology

The predisposition to respond to certain stimuli differently from other stimuli is called _____.

preparedness

Motivation

Internal state that acts to initiate or energize behavior

Hypothalamus

• produces motivated behavior; receives projections from all major nervous system subdivisions

•Integrates diverse adaptive behavior; behavioral control column

•Acts to organize cerebral inputs and produce feedback loops that regulate cerebral information to orchestrate homeostasis and motivated behaviors

Regulatory behaviors

•Motivated to meet the survival needs of the animal

•Controlled by homeostatic mechanisms that include the hypothalamus

Regulatory behaviors Examples:

•Internal body temperature; set point

•Amount of water in body

•Balance of dietary nutrients; salt consumption

•Blood-sugar levels

•Waste elimination

Nonregulatory behaviors

•Not required to meet the basic survival needs of the animal; not controlled by homeostatic mechanisms

•Include everything beyond basic survival needs

Most involve variety of forebrain structures, especially the frontal lobes

Nonregulatory behavior Examples:

•Sexual behaviors

•Parental behavior

•Aggressive acts

•Food preference

•Curiosity

Reading

Hypothalamus maintains homeostasis by acting on both:

endocrine and autonomic nervous systems.

The hypothalamus maintains homeostasis by:

•Influencing behaviors selected by the limbic system

•Controling pituitary gland, which is attached to this brain structure by a stalk

•Influencing wide variety of motivated behaviors ranging from heart rate to feeding and sexual activity

Pituitary gland

Endocrine gland attached to the bottom of the hypothalamus.

Its secretions control the activities of many other endocrine glands.

Known to be associated with biological rhythms.

The three principal hypothalamic regions:

periventricular, lateral, and medial.

Medial forebrain bundle (Hypothalamus):

Connects structures in the brainstem with various parts of the limbic system

Forms the activating projections from the brainstem to the basal ganglia and frontal cortex

Dopamine-containing fibers are involved in reward and therefore contribute to many motivated behaviors.

Medial forebrain bundle in the Hypothalamus (MFB) is the________ tract.

principal

Lateral hypothalamus

Is composed of both nuclei and nerve tracts running up and down the brain

Connects the lower brainstem to the forebrain

The production of various neuropeptides suggests a special relationship between the hypothalamus and the_______.

Pituitary gland

Posterior pituitary

Neural tissue; continuation of the hypothalamus

Anterior pituitary:

Glandular tissue; synthesizes various hormones

Releasing hormones:

Peptides released by the hypothalamus to increase or decrease the release of hormones from the anterior pituitary

Hypothalamic Involvement in Hormone Secretions:

Makes peptides (e.g., oxytocin) that is transported down axons to terminals in the posterior pituitary.

Capillaries in the posterior pituitary’s vascular bed pick up these peptides.

Peptides then enter the bloodstream, which carries them to distant targets

ACTH hormone:

Controls secretions of the adrenal cortex

TSH hormone:

Controls secretions of the thyroid gland

FSH hormone:

Controls secretions of the gonads

LH Hormone:

Controls secretions of the gonads

Prolactin

Controls secretions of the mammery glands

Growth Hormone(GH):

Promotes growth throughout body

Factors involved in controlling hypothalamic hormone–related activity:

• Feedback loops

• Neural regulation

• Experiential responses

Feedback loops:

Control the amount of hormone released

Hormones influence the hypothalamus to decrease secretion of releasing hormones.

_____ is behavior motivated to meet an animal’s survival needs.

Regulatory behavior

The anterior pituitary gland produces _____.

hormones

Odorant molecules enters the nasal pathway and make contact with the_______, where the molecules dissolve into the mucosa

Epithelium

Pheromones

•Biochemicals released by one animal that acts as chemosignals to affect the physiology or behavior of another animal

•Detected by a special olfactory receptor system known as the vomeronasal organ (connected to the amygdala and hypothalamus)

Body odors activate brain regions involved in:

emotional processing

The five taste receptor types:

Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and Umami

The main gustatory nerve (solitary tract):

Cranial nerves 7, 9, and 10

Loss of olfactory and gustatory functions is referred to as:

anosmia and ageusia.

Chemosignals that affect the behavior of another animal are called _____.

pheromones

Three nutrient types are extracted from the digestive system:

•Lipids (fats)

•Amino acids (building blocks of proteins)

•Glucose (sugar)

___________ keep track of the level of each nutrient in the bloodstream.

Detector Cells

Aphagia

Failure to eat; may be due to unwillingness to eat or to motor difficulties, especially with swallowing, following lesions to the lateral hypothalamus. (Electrical stimulation elicits feeding.)

Hyperphagia

Disorder in which an animal overeats, leading to significant weight gain; observed following lesions to the ventromedial hypothalamus

Amygdala

•Projects to the hypothalamus

•Alters food preferences and abolishes taste aversion learning when damaged

Orbital prefrontal cortex

•Receives input from the olfactory bulb

Damage may decrease eating because of diminished sensory responses to food odor and perhaps taste

Osmotic thirst

•Results from an increased concentration of chemicals known as solutes in body fluids

•Deviations from ideal solute concentration activate systems to reestablish it.

•Drink water to restore solute concentrations.

Hypovolemic thirst

•Results from a loss of overall fluid volume from the body

Kindney’s signal

Motivates us to drink flavored beverages that contain salts and other nutrients

•Drink fluids other than water to restore nutrients.

Water intoxication

•Body tissues swell with the excess fluid, drowning the cells in freshwater.

•Water intoxication develops after sweating heavily by running a marathon in hot weather, such as drinking too much water without electrolytes.

Sex hormones

•Control differentiation of embryonic gonad tissue into testes

•Influence hypothalamus, especially the preoptic area of medial hypothalamus

Influence nervous system regions, especially the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex, and the spinal cord

Sexual dimorphism:

Differential development of brain areas in the two sexes, influenced by gonadal hormones

Androgen insensitivity syndrome:

•XY (genetic male) fetus produces androgens, but body cannot respond to them.

•Still responsive to estrogen produced by both the adrenal glands and the testes, genetic male develops female phenotype.

Androgenital syndrome (congenital adrenal hyperplasia):

•Exposure of the female fetus to excessive amount of androgens

•Effects vary according to level of exposure

Ventromedial hypothalamus:

Controls female mating posture (lordosis)

Preoptic area of the medial hypothalamus:

Controls copulatory behavior but not sexual motivation in males

Amygdala(Sex)

Controls sexual motivation in males and possibly in females (outside their estrous cycle)

One of the two types of effects that hormones exert on the brain is _____.

organization

Three forms of emotional experience suggest the influence of different neural bases of emotions:

•Autonomic response

•Subjective feelings

Cognitions

Constructivist theory: James-Lange theory

•Brain interprets physiological changes as an emotion and produces a cognitive response to autonomic information.

•That response varies with the context in which the autonomic arousal occurs, including the effects on the gut via the ENS.

Brain concocts a story to explain bodily reactions

The hypothalamus produces what form of emotional experience:

Autonomic response (e.g., increased heart rate)

The Amygdala and parts of frontal lobes produces what form of emotional experience:

•Subjective feelings (e.g., fear)

The Cerebral Cortex produces what form of emotional experience:

Cognitions (e.g., thoughts about the experience)

Appraisal theory:

Defines emotions as processes rather than states and views emotional episodes as the activity of several biological subsystems or components.

Neuropsychological theories(emotions):

•Right hemisphere plays a major role in producing strong emotions, especially emotions regarded as negative.

•Left hemisphere generates emotional feeling and the left hemisphere interprets those feelings.

•Danger in overemphasizing laterality at the expense of diminishing the bilateral roles of regions such as the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and amygdala

Limbic system is formed from:

•three- and four-layered cortex (allocortex), which lies adjacent to the six-layered neocortex.

•Allocortex encompasses the cingulate gyrus and the hippocampal formation.

Amygdala consists of three subdivisions:

the corticomedial area, the basolateral area, and the central area; receives input from all sensory systems

Amygdala sends projections primarily to the:

hypothalamus and brainstem

Klüver–Bucy syndrome refers to:

The removal of the amygdala

Klüver–Bucy syndrome symptoms in monkeys:

•Tameness and loss of fear

•Indiscriminate dietary behavior

•Significantly increased autoerotic, gay, and heterosexual activity

•Tendency to attend to and react to every visual stimulus

Visual agnosia (inability to recognize objects)

Olfactory information connects directly to the________in the human brain.

Amygdala

Prefrontal Cortex contributes to specifying the goals of movement:

•Controls selection of movements appropriate to the particular time and context

Selection may be cued by internal information, such as memory and emotion, or it may be a response to context (environmental information).

Prefrontal Cortex general areas:

•Dorsolateral region

•Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)

•Ventromedial PFC

The part of the brain that participates in species-typical behaviors, emotion, and emotional memory is called the _____.

amygdala

_____ is a fear of a clearly defined object or situation.

Phobia

Berridge and Robinson (2003) posit reward has three main components:

Learning and the cues that predict their availability

•Motivations and the cues associated with them (“wanting” it)

Affective (hedonic) responses to the actual pleasure of rewards (“liking” it)

Wanting involves_______.

dopamine

Liking involves_______________.

opioid and benzodiazepine–GABA systems

Animals engage in voluntary behaviors because the behaviors are _____.

rewarding