Chapter 12
Biology of Emotion
Emotion is a difficult topic because it implies
conscious feelings that we cannot observe.
Biological researchers therefore concentrate
mostly on emotional behaviors, which are
observable.
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Emotions, Autonomic Arousal, and the
James-Lange Theory
• Emotional situations arouse the autonomic nervous
system.
– Walter Cannon was the first to understand that
the sympathetic nervous system prepares the
body for “fight-or-flight” responses.
• Each situation evokes its own special mixture of
sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal
– E.g., nausea is associated with sympathetic
stimulation of the stomach (decreasing its
contractions and secretions) and parasympathetic
stimulation of the intestines and salivary glands.
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What is Emotion?
• Psychologists define emotion in terms of
three components:
– Cognition (“This is a dangerous situation”)
– Action (“I feel frightened”)
– Feeling (“Run for the nearest exit”)
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Emotions, Autonomic Arousal, and the
James-Lange Theory (cont’d.)
• But, while these are happening, which comes
first? Emotion or changes in the body?
• The James-Lange theory of emotion
suggests that autonomic arousal and skeletal
action occurs first in an emotion!
• The emotion that is felt is the label that we
give the arousal of the organs and muscle.
– You feel afraid because you run away;
– you feel angry because you attack.
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1
Emotions, Autonomic Arousal, and the
James-Lange Theory (cont’d.)
You quickly appraise something
as good, bad, frightening, or
whatever.
Your appraisal of the
situation leads to an
appropriate action,
such as running
away or attacking.
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Is Physiological Arousal Necessary
for Emotions?
• Research indicates the following:
– Although paralyzed people who cannot move
their arms and legs certainly cannot attack or run
away, but they report feeling emotion to the same
degree as prior to their injury, so we could say
emotional feelings depend on feedback from
autonomic responses.
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Emotions, Autonomic Arousal, and the
James-Lange Theory (cont’d.)
• James-Lange theory leads to two predictions:
– People with a weak autonomic or skeletal
response should feel less emotion
– Increasing one’s response should
enhance an emotion
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Is Physiological Arousal Necessary
for Emotions?
• BOTOX blocks transmissions at synapses and
nerve-muscle junctions. People with BOTOX
injections show:
– Slightly slower time in reading unhappy
sentences. ‘An inability to frown’ interferes
with processing unpleasant information.
– When temporarily paralyze all the facial
muscles, weaker emotional responses are
reported after watching short videos.
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2
Is Physiological Arousal Necessary
for Emotions?
• People with brain damage that prevents
voluntary facial movements have trouble
recognizing other people’s emotional
expressions, especially expressions of fear
•So, all these studies show that feeling a body
change is important for feeling an emotion.
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Is Physiological Arousal Sufficient
for Emotions?
• Panic attacks are marked by extreme
sympathetic nervous system arousal (rapid
heartbeat, fast breathing, etc.)
– Only if perceived as occurring
spontaneously
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Is Physiological Arousal Sufficient
for Emotions?
• According to the James-Lange theory, emotional
feelings result from the body’s action
• If your heart started racing and you started
sweating and breathing rapidly, would you feel
an emotion? Well, it depends. If you had those
responses because you ran a mile, you would
attribute your feelings to the exercise, not
emotion. However, if they occurred
spontaneously, you might indeed interpret your
increased sympathetic nervous system arousal
as fear.
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If you find yourself smiling, do you become happier?
To test this:
Hold a pen in your
mouth, either with
your teeth or
with your lips. Now
examine a page of
newspaper comic
strips.
The key is:
holding a pen with
their teeth
forces a smile.
The sensation of
smiling slightly
increases
happiness.
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3
Is Physiological Arousal Sufficient
for Emotions?
• In another research: a cognitive task and a motor
task are given to the subjects at the same time.
• The cognitive task was to examine photographs
and rate their pleasantness or unpleasantness.
• For the motor task, researchers attached golf tees
to each of the person’s eyebrows and said to try to
keep the tips of the golf tees touching each other.
The only way to do that was to frown.
• People given this instruction rated the
photographs as more unpleasant than the average
for people who were not induced to frown.
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Is Physiological Arousal Sufficient
for Emotions?
• Inducing a frown leads to the rating of stimuli as
slightly less pleasant
• So, creating certain body actions may slightly
influence emotion
• However, there are some exceptional situations
like body’s actions are not required. E.g. smiles
are not necessary for happiness.
– Example: Möbius syndrome. Although they can
not move their facial muscles to make a smile,
they experience happiness and amusement.
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Brain Areas Associated with Emotion
• The limbic system includes the forebrain areas
surrounding the thalamus
– Traditionally been regarded as critical for
emotion
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4
Brain Areas Associated with Emotion
• Does one brain area respond during happiness
and another during sadness/anger/fear/disgust?
Emotional experiences arouse many areas of the
brain.
• PET and fMRI studies also suggest many other
areas of the cerebral cortex, especially the frontal
and temporal lobes, are activated during an
emotional experience.
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Insula
• But,
Of all emotions, only disgust seems to be
associated with the response of a particular brain
area. The insular cortex, or insula, is strongly
activated if you see a disgusting picture
Emotions tend not
to be localized in
specific parts of
the cortex.
A single emotion
increases activity
in various parts of
the brain.
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Insula
• People with insula damage not only failed to
experience disgust in daily life but also had
trouble recognizing other people’s disgust
expressions.
• Insula also reacts to frightening stimuli and
angry faces, so not completely dedicated to
disgust.
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5
Contributions of the L and R Hemispheres
• The two hemispheres of the brain play different
roles in emotion.
• Activation of the frontal and temporal areas of
the left hemisphere is associated with
“approach” and the Behavioral Activation
System
– Marked by low to moderate arousal
– Can characterize either happiness or anger
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Contributions of the L and R Hemispheres
• Differences in frontal cortex activity relates to
personality
• People with greater activity in the left
hemisphere tend to be happier, more outgoing, and friendlier
• People with greater right hemisphere activity
tend to be socially withdrawn, less satisfied
with life, and prone to unpleasant emotions
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Contributions of the L and R Hemispheres
• The Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) is
associated with increased activity of the frontal
and temporal lobe of the right hemisphere
– Increases attention and arousal
– Inhibits action (‘avoiding’ behavior)
– Stimulates emotions such as fear and
disgust
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Contributions of the L and R Hemispheres
• The right hemisphere seems to be more
responsive to emotional stimuli than the left.
• Damage to the right temporal cortex causes
problems in the ability to identify emotions of
others.
• When the right hemisphere is inactive, people do
not experience strong emotions and don’t
remember feeling them
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6
Contributions of the L and R Hemispheres
• A research:
• People watched videotapes of 10 people. All 10
described themselves honestly during one
speech and completely dishonestly during
another.
• The task of the observers was to guess which
one is honest. Most people are no more correct
than chance level.
• Those with damage to the left hemisphere are
better at detecting others’ emotions.
With the left hemisphere out of the way, the right
hemisphere was free to do what it does best.
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The Functions of
Emotions
• Functions of emotions
include:
– Adaptive values (fear leads
to escape, anger leads to
attack, etc.)
• Allow us to make quick
decisions
• Help us make moral
decisions
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Contributions of the L and R Hemispheres
• R hemispheres of 11 people were anesthetized by
drug injection into one of the arteries. RH is inactive
• They could still describe sad, frightening, or irritating
events they had experienced in life, but they
remembered only the facts, not the emotion. E.g.,
one patient remembered a car wreck, another
remembered visiting his mother while she was dying.
But they denied they had felt any significant fear,
sadness, or anger.
• When they described the same events with both Hs
active, they remembered strong emotions. So, when
the RH is inactive, people do not experience strong
emotions and do not even remember feeling them.
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Emotions and Moral Decisions
The Trolley Dilemma. The only way you can prevent their
death is to switch the trolley onto another track, where it will kill one
person.
Footbridge Dilemma. The only way you can prevent their
death is to push a heavy-set stranger off the footbridge and onto
the track so that he will block the trolley.
The Lifeboat Dilemma. If you push one of the people off
the boat, the boat will stop sinking and the rest of you will survive.
The Hospital Dilemma. A nurse bursts into your office:
“Good news! A visitor to the hospital has just arrived, who has
exactly the same tissue type as all five of your patients! We can kill
this visitor and use the organs to save the five others!”
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7
Emotions and Moral Decisions
• In each of these dilemmas, you can save five
people by killing one person. However, although
that may be true logically, the decisions do not
feel the same.
• When we are making a decision about right and
wrong, we seldom work it out rationally. One
decision or the other immediately “feels” right.
After we have already decided, we try to think of
a logical justification.
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Emotions and Moral Decisions
• So, the consequences of our decisions have
emotional considerations. Emotions are an
important component to moral decisions.
• Brain scans show that contemplating the
footbridge or lifeboat dilemma activates brain
areas ‘the prefrontal cortex, amygdala and
cingulate gyrus’. These are the areas which
respond to emotions.
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May not be scanned, copied, duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Decision Making After Brain Damage
that Impairs Emotions
• Damage to the prefrontal cortex impairs decision
making
• Leads to impulsive decision-making without
pausing to consider consequences. These people’s
decisions often seem unemotional.
• Stems from failure to anticipate unpleasantness of
an outcome. Example: Phineas Gage. His behavior
was impulsive and he made poor decisions.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QXI_BxlY7M)
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8
Decision Making After Brain Damage
that Impairs Emotions
• Another case: A man with prefrontal cortex damage
who expressed almost no emotions. Nothing
angered him. He was never very sad, even about
his own brain damage. Nothing gave him much
pleasure, not even music. He frequently made bad
decisions that cost him his job, his marriage, and
his savings.
• Those with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal
cortex show decreased guilt. They lack a normal
sense of guilt. They show little concern for other
people.
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Decision Making After Brain Damage
that Impairs Emotions
Iowa Gambling Test
The best strategy is to pick cards from decks C
and D. In the experiment, however, people have
to discover the payoffs by trial and error.
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Decision Making After Brain Damage
that Impairs Emotions
• People gradually start showing signs of nervous
tension whenever they draw a card from A or B,
and they start shifting their preference toward C
and D.
• People with damage to either the prefrontal cortex
or the amygdala are slow in processing emotional
information.
• In this experiment, they show no nervous tension
when drawing from decks A and B, and they
continue choosing those decks.
• In short, failure to anticipate the unpleasantness of
likely outcomes leads to bad decisions.
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9