Emotion I & II: Concepts, Fear, and Reward

A comprehensive set of vocabulary flashcards covering general emotion concepts, evolutionary theories, anatomical milestones (Papez, MacLean, Klüver-Bucy), fear, anxiety, and the neurodevelopmental substrates of reward.

Emotions

States elicited by rewarding or aversive stimuli ($S^+$ or $S^-$) and their omission ($-$) or termination ($!$).

Darwin (1872)

Author of "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," exploring the evolutionary value of physiological and behavioral responses.

Papez's theory of emotion (1937)

Proposes that emotions are produced by a circuit of interconnected brain regions including the Hypothalamus, Anterior thalamic nuclei, Cingulate cortex, Hippocampus, and Mammillary bodies.

Klüver-Bucy syndrome

A syndrome resulting from bilateral removal of the temporal lobe in rhesus monkeys, characterized by visual agnosia, hyperorality, hypersexuality, docility, and hypermetamorphosis.

Visual agnosia

A behavioral change in Klüver-Bucy syndrome defined by the inability to recognize objects.

Hyperorality

A tendency to examine objects by mouth, observed in Klüver-Bucy syndrome.

Hypermetamorphosis

Compulsive attention to visual stimuli, identified as a symptom of Klüver-Bucy syndrome.

MacLean‘s limbic system theory (1949)

Also known as the triune brain theory, it suggests the brain consists of evolutionary layers: survival instincts, the Limbic System (Paleomammalian brain) for emotions/memory, and the Neocortex (neomammalian brain) for high-order reasoning.

Phineas Gage

A historical case described by Harlow (1868) where an iron rod damaged the frontal lobe, resulting in drastic changes to personality and behavior.

Interoception

The perception of internal bodily states such as hunger, thirst, or heart rate, which Nauta (1971) suggested is processed and integrated by the frontal lobes.

Olds and Milner (1954)

Researchers who identified brain-stimulation induced reward, showing that electrical stimulation of certain brain regions could induce rewarding effects.

Anhedonia

The inability to feel pleasure; Wise et al. (1978) examined how neuroleptic drugs could induce this state.

Fear

Phasic escape or avoidance responses to distinct aversive stimuli.

Anxiety

A tonic response to diffuse aversive situations, often associated with conflict and uncertainty.

Classical fear conditioning

A behavioral paradigm where a neutral stimulus (e.g., a loud tone) is paired with an aversive stimulus (e.g., a shock), causing the subject to learn to fear the tone.

Lateral and Central Amygdala

Specific brain regions found to be required for conditioned fear responses.

Reward

An object or event that elicits approach and is worked for, associated with the states of 'wanting' and 'liking'.

Wanting

A reward-related state characterized by the 'feeling' of desire and approach behaviors.

Liking

A reward-related state characterized by the 'feeling' of pleasure (explicit) and objective responses such as facial expressions (implicit).

Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA)

A midbrain region containing dopamine neurons that process reward-driven behavior and releases dopamine in response to expected rewards and novel stimuli.

Nucleus Accumbens (NAc) Shell

A brain region where opioid receptors play a role in 'liking' and dopamine receptors play a role in 'wanting'.

Meso-corticolimbic dopamine system

A system where rewards increase NAc dopamine; dopamine antagonists in this system block responses normally maintained by reward.

PPTg to VTA Projection

A cholinergic projection involved in electrical self-stimulation; cholinergic drugs are self-administered into the VTA via this pathway.

mPFC to VTA Projection

A glutamatergic projection involved in electrical self-stimulation that stimulates dopamine release in the Nucleus Accumbens.

Common Currency of Emotion

A functional implication suggesting the brain generates adaptive responses by integrating assessment of positive and negative stimuli through shared substrates like dopamine and the amygdala.