Chapter 15: Neural Correlates of
Conscious Emotional Experience
Richard Lane
Group 2
Hannah Stolarczyk
Kimberly Villalva
Stephanie Regan
Barbara Kim
1. What is the key assumption?
Work on emotional awareness- language promotes and
influences development of our perceptual blueprint (schemata)
for processing emotional information – both external stimuli
and internal, such as thoughts and memories
How do “schemata” relate to linguistic descriptions of
emotion discussed earlier in the chapter?
• Established schemata's effect processing of emotional information
(verbal & nonverbal)
• The way we use language related to emotion affects our conscious
experience of emotion
• Example: Mothers describes emotional
experience to children, “you feel sad”
2. How can schemata affect processing of
nonverbal emotion information?
• Schemata set up a
situation that allows
us to predict how
others will respond,
and allows us to
respond.
• Verbal and
nonverbal emotion
information lie along
the same line.
2. How can schemata affect processing of
nonverbal emotional information?
• 70% of face-to-face
communication is
nonverbal.
• One unconscious,
nonverbal schema is that
people smile when happy
and frown when angry or
unhappy. Thus, many
people would think this
man is angry.
• We see a persons actions
and interpret how we
should before words are
ever exchanged.
• Reality – people didn’t smile
during this era of photography
because the exposure of the
film took too long to hold a
smile or relaxed pose.
4. Tell the class about the Levy Chimeric Faces
Test (LCFT).
• Uses 36 composite
faces
• One side neutral, one
side smiling
• Participants are asked
which one is happier.
• Determines which
hemisphere is more
dominant
• Right hemisphere is
more specialized for
processing emotional
4. Contrast the LEAS, PAT, and LCFT
• LCFT – Measures hemispheric dominance
associated with processing of emotional
information.
• LEAS correlates strongly with PAT and
with LCFT
Supports that LEAS measures:
- Complexity of emotional experience,
doesn’t just measure verbal ability
- Doesn’t measure intensity of affective
experience
- Used in processing emotional stimuli
(verbal/nonverbal)
- More emotionally aware people prefer right
hemisphere which is specialized for
detection of emotional cues
5. What knowledge about emotion was added when
examining brain function with PET?
• PET shows areas of increased • Recall-induced
blood flow during tasks involved
emotion cluster in BA
film-induced emotional states
23
and recall-induced emotional
• Film-induced emotion
states.
cluster in BA 24
• Overlap of the separate
associations during film and
recall- induced emotion between
LEAS and blood flow of the ACC
6. Is the ACC near other emotion centers in the brain?
The affective subdivision of ACC is connected to the amygdala,
hypothalamus, hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex, and has
outflow to autonomic, visceromotor and endocrine systems
6.How does its role in emotion relate to
other functions of ACC?
• ACC has both cognitive and affective
subdivisions.
• ACC involved in the cognitive processing of
emotion
• ACC also involved in attention, pain,
response selection, error detection, maternal
behavior, vocalization, skeletomotor function,
and autonomic control
• It is not possible to entirely separate the
processing of emotion from cognition or
cognition from emotion.
7. How can emotion guide attention? Do people pay attention to things
that make them feel emotion? Or to the emotion itself? Is attention
focus guided by anything other than emotion?
• Emotion, pain, or other external
or internal stimuli provide
moment-to-moment guidance to
the ACC about how to allocate
attention.
• People attend both to the
stimuli and the emotion in a
complex top-down/bottom up
interaction
• Attention focus is often guided
by salience: prominent stimuli
will grab attention. Dangerous
stimuli are more salient than
neutral/mildly pleasant
7. How can emotion guide attention? Do people pay attention to things
that make them feel emotion? Or to the emotion itself? Is attention
focus guided by anything other than emotion?
• The conscious experience of
emotion could occur concomitantly
and automatically as attention gets
redirected by emotion. The role of
the ACC in the conscious
experience of emotion fits well with
its other functions, (ie: pain or
maternal behavior) suggesting that
this role is not exclusive to
emotion.
• People who are more emotionally
aware, attend more to internal and
external emotional cues, so the
cognitive processing of this
information can contribute to
ongoing emotional development.
• Attention guided by
salient stimulus of dog.
8. The Stroop task was the first task noted to really activate the
ACC. What is the relationship between this finding and discussion
about ACC and emotion and attention in the chapter?
• Stroop task measures capacity to direct attention
• Stroop is a cognitive task, but it activates the ACC.
• Stroop task supports theory that ACC processing
mechanisms underlie selective attention.
• Stroop task requires you to say the color of the word,
not what the word says.