To What Extent Do Cognitive and Biological Factors Interact in Emotion

In class we discussed the three main theories of emotion: the James Lange, Cannon Bard, and the Two Factor. The James Lange theory believes people's emotions follow, rather than cause, behavioral reactions to situations. The Cannon-Bard theory suspects emotions accompany the bodily responses that are aroused by an external stimulus. Similarly, the Two Factor theory believes an emotion is

Furthermore, Physiological and emotional responsiveness describes how two separate events occurring simultaneously or close together in time may result in a conditioned physiological reaction, which may occur when only one of the stimulus is present (Bandura, 1977). The sounds and events that occurred during Kampuschs time in captivity were closely paired to physical violence, hunger and loneliness that even after she escaped she still described feeling like the outside world brought no relief, evidence of conditioned physiological reactions. Supportive of the explanation of social learning theory Barber and Hahn (1964) found that when individuals were aware of events, which proceeded distress, the events had the ability to create fear-arousing thoughts, these fear arousing thought had the ability to result in physiological reactions similar to those of actual fearful events (Cuthbert et al.,

Emotions run the world: many buy the “perfect dress” to feel confident, others run for fun, and others sleep as their sadness increases. Thus, in a world where emotions lead, mankind struggles to reason. Dr. Mark G. Baxter, a neuroscientist at Harvard University, and Dr. Elisabeth A. Murray, a Senior Investigator at the National Institute of Mental Health, are perfect examples of why many professionals in the science and medical field should start to investigate the amygdala, an “almond-shaped group of nuclein” associated with emotion, due to it being one of the most important parts of the brain as it is what defines what people do in their everyday basis. Nature, one of the most respected journals in the scientific community, published Dr. Baxter and Dr. Murray’s “The Amygdala and Reward” on July 2002 Nature Publishing Group arguing through ethos and logical appeals that the amygdala processes reward in the brain as well a negative emotions. Both neuroscientists prove the importance of understanding the connections between reward and emotions by analyzing their experiments performed on moneys and other primates, and including facts and statistics from other scientists and doctors. This well crafted article conscientiously analyzes how the amygdala’s role in stimulus-reward learning might be just as important as its role in processing negative fear and conditioning by providing credibility, reliability, logic, and reason to the audience.

The thalamus is similar to a doctor that diagnoses, or identifies, a patient's disease or sickness. It diagnoses different sensory information that is being transmitted to the brain including auditory (relating to hearing or sound), visual, tactile (relating to touch), and gustatory (relating to taste) signals. After that, it directs the sensory information to the different parts and lobes of the cortex. If this part of the brain is damaged, all sensory information would not be processed and sensory confusion would result.

The amygdala is responsible for how one perceives certain emotions such as anger, fear, and sadness, also for controlling emotions like aggression.

Another deep structure within the brain is the thalamus. The thalamus is the relay station for all of the signals that come into the cortex. The thalamus identifies the signals that are being sent to the brain that include senses from vision, hearing, touch, and taste. Once the signal is identified the thalamus then directs it to the particular lobe necessary for the brain to process it. If the thalamus were to become damaged the processing of senses would become impaired and confusion would occur often when ever one was trying to process something.

One of the main exceptions to the bleak state of affairs regarding the brain mechanisms of emotion is the body of research concerned with neural system underlying fear, especially in the context of the behavioral paradigm called fear conditioning. It has, in fact, been research on fear conditioning, and the progress that has been made on this topic, that has been largely responsible for the renaissance of interest of emotion within neuroscience. In this work, the fear system has been treated as a set of processing circuits that detect and respond to danger, rather than as a mechanism through which subjective states of fear are experienced. Through this approach, fear is operationalized, or made experimentally tractable. Some limbic areas turn

Emotion is described as a frame of mind which can impact one’s mood or mental attitude. (Openstax College, 2014) Many factors come into play when expressing an emotion, one being the biological makeup of emotion. The biological makeup of emotion can play a key role in influencing mood and behavior in both a positive and negative way. There are three biological systems that influence the biological makeup of emotion: the nervous system, the endocrine system and the limbic system.

Researchers have debated about the phenomenon with emotions. Debates on this topic have and will continue to for many more years. Researchers have attempted to understand why one has emotions and came up with the five different theories. The first theory is the James-Lange theory, which argues that an event can cause physiological arousal first and, it can be interpret this as an arousal. Second theory is the Cannon-Bard theory that argues that all humans experience a physiological arousal and an emotional one at the same time. It still does not give any attention to the role of the thoughts or an outward

The Flight or Fight theory and the GAS reflect that people only respond to the stimulus around them. Both of the models disregarded that there are psychological factors that deal with stress and that individuals interact with the stressors not just elicit a response from the stressors. A study that contradicts is the Lazarus transaction model of stress which claimed that certain stimuli cause stress based on the individual and how they perceive the stressor. Some may perceive a stimulus as stressful while someone else may not think the stimulus is stressful. Spiesman el al conducted a study in 1964 which looks at how participants appraise different situations. Participants were shown a film about genital surgery with three different soundtracks.

This small area is placed to receive stimuli from all the sensory cortices and other sensory areas. It is together with the hippocampus, considered a part of the limbic system. The amygdala receives input from all levels of sensory processing. From thalamus, it receives early sensory signals that have not yet been highly analyzed. A more thorough analysis of a stimulus is done in the sensory cortex that also projects to the amygdala .

These theories are very comparable in that they both believe that the first reaction in emotional response as body arousal e.g sweating, increased heart rate and perspiration. Both theories believe this is the foundation of the which leads to the next response. In contrast the two-factor theory delves into more depth with an extra phase which is interpretation of the situation and labelling the environment for example “My heart is pounding, because I can see the environment I am in is unsafe”. This then subsequently turning into the subjective experience. The James-Lange theory is more basic and suggest that your reaction is straight from physiological arousal making this theory more basic and less applicable

Chapter 2 is centered on the early attempts to identify the brain’s components of emotions. Key researchers that are discussed are a Cornell neuroanatomist, James Papez, and aforementioned physician and neuroscientist Paul MacLean, who worked at Yale and the National Institutes of Mental Health. Together, this pair of researchers conducted seminal medial temporal lobe lesion experiments. The resulting idea was that the emotional brain is composed of a set of interconnected structures in the core of the brain. MacLean dubbed these structures as the “limbic system”. The function of the limbic system and it relationship to emotion was widely debated by many researchers.

In the next paragraphs I will consider some theories, factors and evidence on cognitive controlling of emotion in terms of

Thalamus: at the tip of the brainstem, this structure sends sensory information to its respective area in the cortex of the brain and sends the cerebellum and medulla the response (Myers 97). When I taste cheese, the sensory information is sent to the thalamus, and then since cheese is so good, my body wants more.