Biopsychology of Emotion,

Stress, and Health

Point of Emotions?

 Primitive way of communicating states

(before language) and cross-species
communication

 Threats, coaching, crossing language

barriers, approvals, STOP!
Embodied Emotions
 Emotions can influence the state of the body

 Emotions can also be influenced by the state

of the body

 How we feel somatically influences how we

feel in the brain AND vice versa.
 Medial Prefrontal Lobes and
Human Emotion
 Medial portions of the orbitofrontal cortex and
cingulate cortex

 Site of emotion-cognitive interaction, especially

cognitive suppression of emotional reactions

 Possible roles in comparison of outcome and

expectancy, guiding behavior based on recent
experience, response to social rejection
Emotion and the Limbic System
Emotional expression is controlled by the
amygdala, mammillary body, hippocampus,
fornix, cortex of the cingulate gyrus, septum
pellucidum, olfactory bulb, and the
hypothalamus.
Brain Mechanisms of Human
Emotion: Cognitive Neuroscience
 Three main points have advanced the understanding of brain
mechanisms of emotion
 Brain activity associated with each human emotion is diffuse (No clear cortical
representation)

 There is usually motor and sensory regional activity along with an emotional
response (Some form of expression)

 Brain activity for experienced, imagined, or observed emotion is similar

Emotions and Facial Expression
 Facial expressions are universal

 Facial feedback hypothesis – smiling makes you

happier; facial muscles influence emotional
experience

 Microexpressions – brief facial expressions reveal

true feelings; may break through false ones

 Different muscles involved in fake and real smiles

Six Primary Emotions
Emotions and Facial Expression
 Paul Ekman

 Facial Action Coding System

(FACS) is a system to
taxonomize human facial
movements by their appearance on the face,
Refined by Paul Ekman and Wallace V.
Friesen, and published in 1978.
 Fear, Defense, and Aggression
 Fear – emotional reaction to threat

 Aggressive behaviors – designed to threaten or harm

 Defensive behaviors – designed to protect from threat or

harm (motivated by fear)

 Social aggression – unprovoked attacks on members of

one’s own species to establish dominance

 Defensive attack – aggressive behavior, as when cornered

Basic Fear Circuit
Amygdala and Fear Conditioning
 Amygdala is in charge of learning fear

 The amygdala receives input from all sensory

systems
 Appears to be responsible for adding emotional
significance to another stimulus
 Amygdala projects to brainstem regions that
control emotional behavior output
 Neural Mechanisms of Fear
Conditioning

 Fear conditioning
 Pair a neutral stimulus (e.g., a tone) with an
aversive stimulus (e.g., a shock)

 Present the tone later and the animal will show a

conditioned fear response
 Usually a defensive behavior
Contextual Fear Conditioning
and the Hippocampus
 Pair an aversive stimulus with the context
instead of with a discrete stimulus
 Hippocampus is linked to spatial memory

 Effect of bilateral hippocampal lesions on

contextual fear conditioning
 Before training – prevents conditioning
 Shortly after training – blocks retention of
conditioning
 Amygdala Complex and Fear
Conditioning
 Lateral amygdala is most critical in conditioned
fear
 In addition, conditioned fear is suppressed by
the prefrontal cortex inhibiting the lateral
amygdala (feedback loop)

 The hippocampus mediates conditioned fear

learning by informing the lateral amygdala about
the context of the fear-related event
Aggression and Testosterone
 Social aggression in humans
 Varying levels of testosterone has no affect on
aggression levels. (roid rage and aggressive outburst are
not really conclusive)

 Violent criminals and aggressive male athletes may have

high testosterone levels, but may be a result (not cause)
of aggressive behavior (MAOA gene is more plausible)
Problems with studying the
aggression circuit
 It is intertwined with other areas of the brain that
govern other social behaviors.

 Measured blood testosterone level; should measure

brain- part testosterone level.

 Failure of researchers to distinguish between social

aggression (testosterone-related, for establishing
dominance) and defensive aggression (e.g., when
cornered)
Emotional Hijacking
 When our amygdala bypasses our normal
higher cortical processes

 “Nan-laban”, “nan-dilim ang paningin”, “I said

‘I love you’ but I lied!
Hehehe
Stress and Health
 Hans Selye

 Stress – reaction to harm or threat

 Stressors – stimuli that cause stress

 Chronic psychological stress – most clearly

linked to ill health

 In the short-term, stress is adaptive; in the long-

term, it is maladaptive
 The Stress Response
Stress triggers stress hormone:
anterior-pituitary adrenal-cortex system
(glucocorticoids, epinephrine, and
norepinephrine) and cytokines (causing
inflammation and fever)

 Individual differences, such as attitude, affect the

magnitude of the stress response
 Example: women awaiting surgery who were “certain”
they did not have breast cancer had milder stress
than others
Psychosomatic Disorders: The
Case of Gastric Ulcers
 Gastric ulcers – lesions of stomach lining and
duodenum

 More common in those who are stressed;

 Ulcers are caused by a bacteria – stress

appears to makes the body vulnerable to this
bacteria

 75% of healthy subjects have the bacteria

 Psychoneuroimmunology
 Study of the interaction of psychological
factors, the nervous system, and the
immune system
 Immune System
 Divisions of the mammalian immune
system
 Innate immune system
 First line of defense
 Attacks generic classes of pathogens
 Adaptive immune system
 Targets specific pathogens identified by their
antigens
 Has memory (the basis of effectiveness of
vaccination)
 Cytokines activate lymphocytes (white blood cells)
 Cell-mediated (T lymphocytes)
 Antibody-mediated (B lymphocytes)
Effect of Stress on the Immune
System
 Effects of stress on immune function
depends on the kind of stress
 Acute stressors improve immune function
 Chronic stressors impair immune function

 Many ways that stress can impact immune

function
 Effects of stress can be good (adaptive and
healthful), bad, or mixed
 BOOM BULAGA!!!

 STRESS DOES NOT INCREASE THE SUSCEPTIBILITY TO

INFECTIOUS DISEASES! ONLY OUR BODILY RESPONSE TO
INFECTIONS ARE INFLUENCED BY STRESS!

1. The Immune system has many redundant components; disruption of

one or little of them doesn’t really result in a pronounced effect

2. Stress-produced changes in the immune system may be too short-

lived to have substantial effects on the probability of an infection

3. Declines in some aspects of immune function may result in a

compensatory response in others
 Early Experience of Stress

 Stress or mistreatment early in life may cause

brain and endocrine abnormalities later in life

 epigenetic transmission: We condition offspring

to react to their stressors in distinct ways.
 Stress and the Hippocampus
 Hippocampus has many glucocorticoid
receptors

 Following stress
 Dendrites of pyramidal cells are shorter and less
branched
 Adult neurogenesis of granule cells reduced