Exam 4: Emotions

Monday, April 23, 2012 6:39 AM

1. People who committed crimes like rape and murder had higher percentages of testosterone compared with people who committed crimes like burglary. 2. Another biological evidence is the level of monoamine oxidase: monoamine oxidase breaks down monoamines. a. What are the monoamines? (catecholamines) Dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin. b. Found a particular gene that messes with monoamines in humans. c. Graph: Low levels and high levels of MAO activity compared with environmental factors. If you weren't neglected or mistreated as a child, you don't show a significant amount of antisocial behavior. If people have a predisposition for certain things, depending on how you're raised and the environment the disorder may be seen/not seen. 3. Overall Low levels of serotonin related to aggression. 4. These seemingly different types of behavior feed into the same endocrine system. a. Hans Selye defined stress as the non specific response of the body to any demand that is imposed (made upon) the body. b. Three different stages called general adaptation syndrome i. Fast reaction to something dangerous, alarm stage--characterized by increased sympathetic nervous system activity. If the stressor is a short one, the sympathetic system kicks in and then regains balance and goes away. ii. Resistance stage, when the stressor or stressful situation is prolonged, then your HPA kicks in (endocrine system that eventu ally releases stress hormone). iii. Once you kick your sympathetic and HPA system in, then you go into exhaustion stage where your body gets tired. Can be more susceptible to danger. c. Adaptive system, body can mobilize energy to where its needed. Evolutionary, the stressors that animals had involved fightin g/running, mobilizing energy to heart, lungs, muscles and get ready to fight. d. However, in modern societies, we don't usually have that kind of threat, its a more vague or non physical stressful situation, but these mechanisms still kick in and that's why prolonged stress leads to these kinds of side effects. Prolonged stress can lead to hypertension. i. If you prolong the stressful situation, it can lead to bad health consequences. Increased cardiovascular activity can lead to hypertension. ii. Prolonged shutting down of digestive system-->ulcers iii. The short term response system doesn't care about long term activities like growth or digestion and this can lead to ulcers, etc. 5. Stress can be social stress, microbes, toxins, impaired nutrition. All can be potential stressors. In addition to kicking in stress system, it can affect the immune system and is also connected with other systems (nervous systems, genetic factors) can influence cognitive ability as well. All can lead to health consequences. 6. HPA system. (Hypothalamic Pituitary adrenal axis) In the face of a stressful situation-->hypothalamus kicks in and releases CRF (corticotrophin releasing hormone) into anterior pituitary--> AP releases ACTH-->adrenal gland receives information and releases cortisol. Cortisol is final product. Negative feedback pathway. If there's enough cortisol floating around, it will eventually shut down the hypothalamus. 7. PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress disorder): It's always been around, but especially now that we've been in several wars for the past 10 years, we are dealing with a lot more people who have post traumatic stress disorder. Other events can also cause people to have PTSD such as rape, sexual molestation, physical attack, combat exposure, childhood neglect/ physical abuse. a. Not everybody gets PTSD even if they go through similar/identical situations. b. Persistent re-experiencing of the event in thoughts and dreams. Followed by intense distress and physiological symptoms. c. Fear conditioning can potentially explain how certain environmental cues can trigger events. d. For an individual who underwent a traumatic experience with loud noise, a loud noise can be the trigger to that experience, o r even a similar environment. They avoid anything that can trigger that. e. Self reported distress responses (graph): i. White noise and combat sounds and asked normal controls and combat controls and individuals with ptsd to rate their distress. People with PTSD rate the combat noise to be a lot worse as white noise. ii. Skin conductance: physiological measure that you can do to see how much they respond to environmental factors. NC and CC show similar skin conductance. PTSD individuals show high response, indicating both psychologically and physiologically these individuals are going through something different than people with 8. PTSD is also frequently associated with 9. Brain Effects of PTSD a. PTSD in humans have been linked to shrinkage of the hippocampus and other brain changes. i. Vietnam vets with PTSD were found to have a smaller hippocampal volume than control subjects matched for socioecnomic facts, age, alcohol use, etc. b. Chicken and egg debate: the studies didn't look at hippocampus before trauma and there is an argument that people who have smaller size hippocampus (within normal range) are vulnerable to PTSD. It's not that PTSD is shrinking hippocampus, if you have smaller hippocampus to start with and face trauma, then you're more likely to have PTSD. c. 10. Graph: People who developed PTSD compared to both subjects that experienced abuse without ptsd and those who didn't experience ptsd. 11. Study: Divided dutch policmen to ones who developed PTSD due to particular experience and those who did not develop PTSD. Overall the dutch policmen who had ptsd tend to have lower hippocampal volume and there was a negative correlation between hippocampus and horrible situation.

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horrible situation. 12. Size of hippocampal neurons, both males and female who went through a stressful situation (esp in males), hippocampal neurons were smaller and more damaged. 13. Excessive activation of amygdala. People who underwent combat and developed PTSD showed heightened activation in amygdala. 14. Overall reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and because of reduced activity in PFC, some people speculate that people who have PTSD have a hard time regulating emotion and processing stimuli (pfc, esp. orbitofrontal cortex, controls response to emotional stimuli, reduced function of pfc results in emotional irregularity) 15. PTSD three brain areas: Hippocampus, amygdala, prefrontal cortex. 16. Why does PTSD happen to some people and not other people? a. Amygdala received such high activity during time of trauma, that it messes up brain wiring. b. We know that generally, emotional memories are much stronger and stay with us a lot longer than situations where there is no emotional component. c. Kindling is intense activation of particular area. 17. Treatments for PTSD a. Something that dampens down overall heightened physiological response. b. Beta blocker: reduces anxiety, noradrenergic receptor blocker (dampens down norepinephrine system). People who have high performance anxiety like public speaking can take beta blockers before they take the stage. 18. Immediately after traumatic event, if you inject beta blockers, you can dampen down the memory, and it reduces the likliehood of developing PTSD. 19. Beta blockers work during consolidation and reconsolidation of memory. 20. Beta blockers cannot always be administered right after traumatic experiences. A more realistic approach is to target reconsolidation. Extinction: a process of new inhibitory learning. Injecting beta blockers during reconsolidation (vulnerable to changes again as it is in short term memory again). a. Animals that received beta blockers showed reduced freezing to stimulus compared to animals that didn't. A month later, same result. This reduction is expected because there is a process called extinction, exposure therapy, present stimulus over and over without shocking, eventually animals learn that the tone doesn't shock anymore. b. Injecting beta blocker during reconsolidation period, animals show reduced memory of traumatic experience. c. The caveat to extinction is that it works great in a controlled environment (therapist room), but not in real life. Extinction is not permanent.

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