The Brain
Plasticity
• Brains ability to repair itself
• Children’s brains show most plasticity
• Plasticity depends on extent of affect
– Damaged
– Destroyed
Structures of the Brain
• 3 major regions
– Hindbrain – (next to the top of the spinal cord)
– Midbrain – (above the hindbrain)
– Forebrain - (uppermost region of the brain)
Hindbrain
Midbrain
Forebrain
3 Brain Regions
Limbic system
• Forebrain
• Memory and emotion
• Determines what information stays in the cortex
• 2 primary structures
Amygdala
Hippocampus
Hypothalamus
Thalamus
Information movement
Hemispheres
• Cerebral cortex is divided into 2 hemispheres
Cerebral Cortex
• Most recently developed
• Highest mental functions occur here
• Connected to other parts of the brain
• Millions of connections to other parts of the brain
Lobes
• Each hemisphere is divided into 4 lobes
– Occipital lobe
– Temporal lobe
– Frontal lobe
– Parietal lobe
Brain Division
Brain Regions and Responsibilities
Emotion
• hemispheric damage
• detect lies
• Does it matter which hemisphere is damaged?
End of notes for TEST 1
Why does Neuroscience matter?
• get theoretical insights from neuroscience
• understand emotional processes that are hard to study
• evolutionary approach
Davidson
• all behavior is approach and avoidance
• How study without neuroscience?
• Evidence
– Hemisphere
– Children
– Other research
Depression in brain
• Melancholia
• Anhedonia
• Hemisphere dominance
Dalai Lama
• Meditation
– Does it change the brain?
– Davidson study
The Amygdala and Unconscious Emotional Processing
• LeDoux
– unconscious affective appraisal system
– Support/Research
– Amygdala
• What happens when you knock out the amygdala
Knock out
• Knock out amygdala in monkeys
• Inappropriate emotional responses
• Do not learn from mistakes
Amygdala vs. Hippocampus
• out the amygdala but not the hippocampus
• can’t track the emotional significance of stimuli
• Can’t compare stimulus
– Hippocampus – memory
• Brain responds to faces
Direct route to action
Unconscious emotion
• LeDoux
• Classical conditioning
• amygdala tracks emotional meaning
• infantile amnesia
D’Amasio
• Somatic marker hypothesis
• Feedback
• Research
– Frontal lobe damage
– Gut feeling, intuition
Neuropeptides
• Oxytocin
• Dopamine
• Norepinephrine
• Serotonin
Oxytocin and LOVE
• Love vs. desire
• Oxytocin released when touched
• Women have 7x’s more oxytocin
• Oxytocin promotes monogomy
• Chocolate and oxytocin