Cognition of Emotion

• -sadness
• anger
• happiness
• surprise
• disgust
• fear

the subjective experience of emotion is the awareness of our own bodily changes in the presence of arousing stimuli---are are sad because we cry

• aka- Somatic Marker Theory
• the experience of emotion is essentially a story the brain concocts to explore bodily changes
• input is ambiguous so social context is considered

somatic markers are stored in the ventralmedial prefrontal cortex, helps make decisions

individuals experience physiological emotions and subjective feelings simultaneously

• subcortical structures mediate emotion
• -cats with removed hypothalamus did show emotional response
• -provide cortex with information required for cognitive perception of emotion

receives input from a variety of sources including the cerebral cortex and the amygdala

• controls the autonomic nervous system using circuits at the brain stem and spinal chord
• -emotion provides homeostasis

• associated with executive function
• social emotion and decision making
• site of the Gage lesion
• regulation of the ability to inhibit, act on social and emotional stimuli

• Lesions:
• absence of autonomic nervous system to disturing images
• normal description using emotional words

• -important for emotional learning and memory
• -damage to amygdala impairs conditioned fear response
• -damage to amygdala is not associated with atypical emotional response to innately aversive or rewarding stimuli

• Implicit Emotional Learning:
• -fast pathway--from thalamus, imcomplete stimulus analysis
• slow pathway--by way of cortex, in depth analysis

• Explicit Emotional Learning:
• interacts with hippocampal memory system
• -most declaritive memory is emotionally laden