emotional learning & memory

E M O T I O N A L L E A R N I N G &

M E M O R Y

L E A R N I N G & M E M O RY

A R L O C L A R K - F O O S

MR Scan:

PUBLIC EMOTIONAL EVENTS

• Presidential Assassinations (and attempts)

• Natural Disasters (e.g., Tsunami or Earthquake)

• Resignation of Margaret Thatcher

• Attack on Pearl Harbor

• O.J. Simpson Verdict

• Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

• Death of Princess Diana

• Death of Osama Bin Laden

• Attack on World Trade Center

How much can you recall?

PUBLIC EMOTIONAL EVENTS

Colegrove (1899)

Abraham Lincoln’s assassination (1865): A very public event

9/11 FLASHBULB

• The evening of 9/10…

• Discovery memory

• Fact memory

• Rehearsals

• More later…

ORDINARY EVENTS

Can you recall details of any specific cars you passed on the way to the

campus today?

EMOTION

• Three Components

– Physiological responses

– Overt Behaviors

– Conscious Feelings

• Fear Responses

• Paul Ekman’s Faces

• Does Culture play any role?

Ekman & Friesen (2003)

AUTONOMIC AROUSAL

• Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)

– Stress Hormones

• Epinepherine (adrenaline)

• Glucocorticoids (e.g., cortisol)

– Similar response for pleasurable and unpleasant situations?

WILLIAM JAMES & CARL LANGE

• Conscious Feelings of Emotion & Physiological Responses

– Which comes first?

– Somatic Theories of Emotion (e.g., Damasio’s Somatic Marker Hyp.)

– Making angry faces or Putting on a happy face

• Rating jokes with chopsticks in your mouth (Strack et al., 1988)

THE PROBLEM WITH RUNNERS AND SEX

• Walter Cannon and Philip Bard (1927)

– Which comes first now?

• Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer (1962)

– “High Bridge”

– Scary Movies

EMOTIONAL ANIMALS

• Tina the Elephant, Chimpanzee Baby Showers, and Killer Whales

– Physiological Responses, Overt Behaviors, Conscious Feelings?

– Tickling and laughing animals

• Tickling as reinforcement

• Vocalizations (Simonet et al., 2005) and Brain Activation (Meyer et al, 2007)

FEAR CONDITIONING

• Freezing, why?

– Conditioned Emotional Response (CER)\

• US, UR, CS, CR

– Emotional Learning is…

• Fast

• Long Lasting

• Hard to Forget/Extinguish

FEAR CONDITIONING

• LeDoux et al. (1990)

1. Familiarize/habituate to environment

2. CS + US

3. Test cue and context

Learn Cue

Without

Context:

Eliminate

Familiarization

Phase

Learn Context

Without Cue:

Eliminate

CS-US

Contingency

SINGLE- AND MULTI-TRIAL LEARNING

• Claparède (1911): Korsakoff’s Disease

– “sometimes people hide needles in their hands”

• Damasio et al. (1985): Boswell

– Hospital staff favorites

• Johnson et al. (1985): Bio sketches

– Amnesiacs could still recall who was a “bad guy”

• Tranel & Damasio (1985): Prosopagnosia

– SCR vs. Recognition: Family vs. Strangers

CONDITIONED ESCAPE

• Negative Reinforcement

SD (Shock) R (Lever) O (Escape)

• Even Better…Conditioned Avoidance

– Shouldn’t this extinguish?

LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

• Seligman’s

– Avoidance Paradigm

• Prior Exposure to Inescapable Shock

• Transfer CS (tone) US (shock) to the Avoidance Paradigm

– Remove Wall, Bait Chamber, Experimenter Encouragement

– Depression?

MERE EXPOSURE HYPOTHESIS

• Zajonc (1968)

– ‘Turkish’ words (e.g., jandara, ikitaf)

– Also for Chinese caligraphy

– Also for rapidly (1msec) presented shapes (Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, 1980)

• Word Frequency

(Kučera & Francis, 1967)

• Ratings of positivity

– Good (more common/positive) vs. Better (less common/positive)

Long Short Above Below

785 212 296 145

STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL

• Rehearsal?

• Cahill & McGaugh (1995)

– Arousing Story Content

EPISODIC MEMORY

• Paired-Associates (Kleinsmith & Kaplan, 1963)

– Numbers and Words

• Love, Kiss, Vomit, Rape

MOOD CONGRUENCY

• Music and Word- Autobiographical Memory Associations

– Eich et al. (1994)

– Advertising?

FLASHBULB MEMORIES

• Brown & Kulik (1977)

– Six categories of remembered info.

– Discovery vs. Fact memory

• McCloskey vs. Bohannon

– indirect rehearsals

• Pillemer (1998)

– High Subjective Confidence

WhereInterrupted

Events

Source Did After

Others

ReactionsMy Reactions

FLASHBULB MEMORIES

• Bohannon on the role of rehearsals and affect

FLASHBULB MEMORIES

• Schmolk et al. (2000)

– Californians and the O.J. Simpson verdict

– Tested at 3 days, 15 months, & 32 months

– Long-term accuracy related to intensity of emotional reaction

FLASHBULB MEMORIES

• FBs are…Long lasting, vivid, largely accurate

• Ulrich Neisser’s Flashbulb Memory

WEAPON FOCUS(A CASE OF AN EMOTION AND MEMORY TRADE-OFF)

WEAPON FOCUS

• Was there an animal in the background?

– What color?

– Johnson & Scott (1976)

• Weapon vs. No Weapon Group

• Bloody letter opener

PAUSE FOR SLIDESHOW…

EMOTIONAL FOCUS: A TRADE-OFF

Central DetailsPeripheral Details

FEAR CONDITIONING AND PHOBIAS

• Freud, Hans, and a fallen Horse

– Unconscious anxiety about father/mother and fear of castration (Freud)

– Conditioned fear of horses (Eichenbaum)

CS (HORSE) US (FALLING ANIMAL/HURT)

CR (FEAR/PHOBIA) UR (FEAR/STARTLE)

FEAR CONDITIONING AND PHOBIAS• Mineka et al. (1984)

– Rhesus Monkey & Mom

• Conditioning a fear of snakes

– Transactive memory (Wegner, 1985)

FEAR CONDITIONING AND PHOBIAS

• Davis et al. (1994): Fear-Potentiated Startle Reflex

– Relaxed vs. Nervous

YOU NEGATIVE NANCY!

• Conditioned Place Preference

No response required for reinforcement

Maybe they just

like lights?

counterbalancing

H I S T O R I C A L V I E W S O F B R A I N A N D E M O T I O N

PAPEZ CIRCUIT (1937)

• Two Pathways

– Higher Order (thought) vs. Lower Order (feeling)

– Limbic Lobe

AMYGDALA

• Nuclei

– Central

– Basal/Basolateral

– Lateral

JOSEPH LEDOUX’SAMYGDALOIDS

JOSÉ DELGADO(1974)

Electrode implantation in the amygdalaDr. José Delgado, Director of Neuropsychiatry Yale University

Medical School Congressional Record, No. 26, Vol. 118 February 24,

1974

"We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our

society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who

deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated.”

"The individual may think that the most important reality is his own

existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks

historical perspective. Man does not have the right to develop his

own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must

electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will

be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain.“

TICKLING THE ALMOND

• Species-typical defensive/emotional reactions

– Cats

– Rabbits

– Humans

Two-Factor Theory

EMOTION EXPRESSION

• Kluver-Bucy disorder (1937): Temporal Lesions

– psychic blindness

• Adolphs et al. (1994, 1995): S.M. (Urbach-Wiethe)

– Difficulty recognizing fear, anger, and surprise

– Perceived fear as emotional, not fearful

ADOLPHS ET AL. (1994)

S.M. (Urbach-Wiethe)

ADOLPHS ET AL. (1995)

BREITER ET AL. (1996)

• Amygdala activation and happy/fearful faces

SOMMERVILLE ET AL. (2000)

• Amygdala activation and happy faces too!

Important for processing emotion, how about remembering it?

FEAR CONDITIONING …AGAIN

• Phillips & LeDoux (1992)

What is happening in the amygdala?

FEAR CONDITIONING CIRCUIT

FEAR CONDITIONING CIRCUIT WITH AUDITORY CS

EMOTIONAL VS. COGNITIVE MEMORY• Bechara et al. (1995): SCR and Recognition

Amygdala

Damage

(Urbach-Wiethe)

Hippocampal

Damage

Amygdala and

Hippocampal

Damage

Direct ~ 12ms

Indirect ~ 19ms

LeDoux’s Two-Factor

THALAMIC AND CORTICAL INPUT

LATERAL ALMOND RESPONDS TO SCARY ALMONDS

• Lateral Nucelus and Learning (LTP)

• Optogenetics

– Replacing CS with Stimulation of Inputs to LN(e.g., Nabavi et al., 2014)

AMYGDALA AND EXPLICIT MEMORY• Cahill et al. (1996)

BASOLATERAL NUCLEUS

• Cahill & McGaugh (1998)

– Arousing story memory and amygdala damage

– Norepinephrine/propranolol

CENTRAL NUCLEUS

Stress Hormones

Blood brain barrier and (Nor)epinipherine

1. Fear

2. ANS

3. Adrenal Gland

4. Brainstem

5. Basolateral (waves)

6. Cortex/Hippo/Basal

STEP-THROUGH INHIBITORY AVOIDANCE

• McGaugh et al. (1996): Basolateral Nucleus

– Glucocorticoids and Vagus Nerve

NEVER FORGET!

• Gold & van Buskirk (1975)

Taste Aversions

• Phillips & LeDoux (1992)

EMOTIONAL CONTEXT

EMOTIONAL VS. COGNITIVE MEMORY (A REMINDER)• Bechara et al. (1995): SCR and Recognition

Amygdala

Damage

(Urbach-Wiethe)

Hippocampal

Damage

Amygdala and

Hippocampal

Damage

A DOUBLE DISSOCIATION

• McDonald & White (1993)

– Win-Shift

• Hippocampus Dmg: Bad

– CPP (Positive)

• Amygdala Damage: Bad

– Win-Stay

• Striatum Damage: Bad

REMEMBERING BY THE SEAT OF YOUR PANTS

• Goldinger & Hansen (2005)

– Thalamic input to LN?

PFC AND THETWO-FACTOR THEORY

• Frontal patients

– Disruption of emotion/mood

– Frontal Lobotomy

PFC AND THETWO-FACTOR THEORY

• Frontal patients

– Disruption of emotion/mood

– Frontal Lobotomy

PFC AND THETWO-FACTOR THEORY

– Reading Emotion (Williams et al., 2001)

DON’T LET IT GET YOU DOWN.