The Mapping of Emotion

The Mapping of Emotion Dr. Essi Viding Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London & Department of Psychology, University College London e.viding@iop.kcl.ac.uk

Mapping of what and where of the emotion • Does it need to be a conscious experience for it to be an emotion? • Simple or complex phenomena? • What is the purpose of emotions? • ‘Where’ are they in the brain? • Are emotions opposite of rational?

Emotions as Response Patterns • Emotional responses can be: • Behavioral: expression of emotion • Autonomic • Hormonal • In humans, and higher primates, awareness of body states contributes to emotion and to a feeling state • However, the body state cannot be distinguished as a specific emotion if it does not have a corresponding ‘object’ in the surroundings • I.e. bodily responses are too general, not specific enough

Does it need to be conscious to be an emotion? • Conscious feelings do not equate emotion • Basic emotion/affective functions exist in animals with considerably smaller brains than humans • Emotional learning can occur without explicit awareness • Mood does not equate emotion

Simple or complex phenomena? • If you want to study it in rats, it has to be (or become) simple • Emotion as a response to reinforcement or punishment (Rolls, 1998)

Mapping emotions in the reinforcement space • Rolls • (Emotional Brain, 1998) Positive reinforcer Ecstasy Elation Omission of negative reinforcer OR Termination of negative reinforcer Omission of positive reinforcer OR Termination of negative reinforcer Pleasure Rege Anger Frustration Relief Grief Sadness Apprehension Fear Terror Negative reinforcer

Purpose of emotions? • Evolutionary functions of emotion • Protection • Territory defense • Approach behaviours

Protection/territory defense: • Threat behavior: • A species-typical behavior that warns another animal that it may be attacked if it does not flee of show submissive behavior.

Defensive behavior/submission: • A species-typical behavior by which an animal defends itself against the threat of another animal • e.g. throat baring in dogs

The Mapping of Emotion

‘Where’ are the emotions in the brain? • Emotion Circuitry • Amygdala • Orbitofrontal Cortex • Anterior Cingulate Cortex • Insula • Different roles – but nothing in the brain acts in isolation

Brain Mechanisms for Emotion • Role of the Amygdala • Lateral/basolateral nuclei: • Nuclei of the amygdala that receive sensory information from the neocortex, thalamus, and hippocampus and send projections to the ventral striatum, the dorsomedial nucleus of the thalamus, and the central nucleus. • ‘Quick and dirty’ processing of information with potential relevance for survival

Fear and the Role of the Amygdala • Basal nucleus: • A group of subnuclei of the amygdala that receive sensory input from the basolateral nuclei and relay information to other amygdaloid nuclei and to the periaqueductal gray matter (fight/flight/freezing response).

The Role of the Amygdala • Central nucleus: • The region of the amygdala that receives information from the basolateral division and sends projections to a wide variety of regions in the brain, involved in emotional responses. • Projections to pons, insula, hypothalamus, and medula for expression and integration of emotional responses

The Role of the Amygdala • Conditioned emotional responses (CERs): • Most emotional responses are a result of Pavlovian conditioning • A previously neutral stimulus can take on the come to elicit an emotional response if paired with a naturally aversive/reinforcing stimulus

When a tone is paired a few times with a foot-shock, rat freezing responses start at the tone, prior to the onset of the shock.

The role of Amygdala • Amygdala as a stimulus-reinforcement associator

The Role of the Amygdala • Perception of emotional expressions • Particularly negative emotional expressions • Human brain imaging studies

fMRI: Fearful expression Amygdala activation Brains from Ahmad Hariri’s study

Amygdala pathology • Patients with amygdala damage • Poor conditioned emotional response • Poor recognition of fear • Recent data suggests that amygdala patients fail to focus on the eyes • most informative part of the face when recognising fear • Psychopaths – amygdala dysfunction? • low amygdala reactivity to emotions • difficulty learning from punishment • Anxiety - amygdala hyperreactivity? • Oversensitive threat system?

Brain Mechanisms for Emotions Orbitofrontal Cortex: • The region of the prefrontal cortex at the base of the anterior frontal lobes. • Receives input from dorsomedial thalamus, ventral tegmentum, and amygdala. • Outputs to cingulate, hippocampus, temporal lobe, amygdala, and hypothalamus. • Involved in using emotion to guide actions

Orbitofrontal pathology • Patients with orbitofrontal damage: • Lack of emotion in decision making • (lack of risk aversion) • Poor social judgment (antisocial behavior) • Poor emotional control (anger)

Brain Mechanisms for Emotions • Cingulate Cortex • Body representations of emotion • Feelings of emotion • Regulation of emotional responses • Coupling with amygdala activity in fMRI studies

Anterior cingulate pathology • Implicated in emotional disorders such as • Depression • Schizophrenia

Brain Mechanisms for Emotions • Insula • Role in processing convergent information to produce an emotionally relevant context for sensory experience, such as disgust and feelings of unease • Warning of potentially noxious stimuli • An important role in pain experience • Codes for affective aspects of pain • Receives an input from central nucleus of amygdala

fMRI: Disgusted expression  right insula activation • Perception of disgusted faces preferentially activated insula

Insula pathology • Obsessive-Compulsive disorder • Higher brain activation to disorder relevant stimuli, as well as other disgusting stimuli

‘Where’ are the emotions in the brain? • Emotion Circuitry • Amygdala • Orbitofrontal Cortex • Anterior Cingulate Cortex • Insula • Different parts of the circuitry selectively affected in different disorders

‘Where’ are the emotions in the brain? • Emotion Circuitry • Amygdala • Orbitofrontal Cortex • Anterior Cingulate Cortex • Insula • Different roles – but nothing in the brain acts in isolation • Brain in action: Example of the complex circuit of brain areas involved in emotion processing

Video from Ahmad Hariri

Brain in action: Example of the complex circuit of brain areas involved in emotion processing • Initial amygdala response  not much conscious processing • The anterior cingulate rides to the rescue of amygdala and regulates the initial emotional response • Finally the complex emotion of ‘embarrassment’ sets in

Are the emotions opposite of rational? • Yes and no. • Can serve us well in situations where we need to react quickly • i.e. gut reaction can initiate the best response • Can give us non-verbal cues about people’s trustworthiness and intentions • Emotional responses can also go awry and make everyday life difficult • Different emotional disorders have different ‘brain signature’ as briefly discussed during this presentation

Exciting future directions in emotion research • Nature-nurture interplay • Genetic and environmental influences on emotional responsivity

Summary • Emotions can be conceptualised as reactions to reinforcing/punishing (threat) ‘object’ in the surroundings • Their purpose is to warn us and guide us • Approach or avoid? • A large and varied brain circuitry subserves emotion perception and regulation of emotional responses • Emotional disorders as malfunctioning of the circuitry • The genetic and environmental influences to the functioning of that circuitry a hot new research topic

The Mapping of Emotion