The ethology of empathy: a taxonomy of real-world targets of need and their effect on observers. The prosocial response has been studied in social, personality, and developmental psychology for decades, revealing largely consistent findings across researchers and populations (reviewed in Eisenberg and Miller, 1987; Preston and de Waal, 2002; Batson, 2011). In order to reliably elicit prosocial responses in the laboratory, virtually all studies used sympathetic, fictional, single targets of need depicted through written narratives, confederates, or actors featuring blameless young children, orphans, or adults in acute pain (e.g., Mehrabian and Epstein, 1972; Batson et al., 1988; Eisenberg et al., 1991).
This approach allowed researchers to successfully predict observers' prosocial response from their trait or state empathic concern (EC), personal distress (PD), perspective taking (PT), emotion regulation, and similarity to the target (among other things; see review in Piliavin and Charng, 1990). Study 1 Materials and Methods Targets Observers Questionnaire data Psychophysiological data. Love Hormone Oxytocin Can Cause Emotional Pain, New Study Says | Neuroscience. New research reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience says that oxytocin, a hormone that promotes feelings of love, social bonding and well-being, can cause emotional pain – an entirely new, darker identity for the hormone.
Stylized structural diagram of oxytocin (DARPA). The study is the first to link oxytocin to social stress and its ability to increase anxiety and fear in response to future stress. Oxytocin appears to be the reason stressful social situations, perhaps being bullied at school or tormented by a boss, reverberate long past the event and can trigger fear and anxiety in the future. That’s because the hormone actually strengthens social memory in one specific region of the brain. “ERK causes enhanced fear by stimulating the brain’s fear pathways, many of which pass through the lateral septum. The study, which was done in mice, is also relevant because oxytocin currently is being tested as an anti-anxiety drug in several clinical trials.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience - Early Access. December 2013, Vol. 25, No. 12, Pages 2047-2060 Posted Online October 30, 2013. (doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00453) © 2013 Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Hebrew University of Jerusalem *The first two authors contributed equally to this study. What do we learn when we practice a simple perceptual task? Many studies have suggested that we learn to refine or better select the sensory representations of the task-relevant dimension. How do babies learn avoidance of heights? Developing a Model of the Insular Cortex and Emotional Regulation: Part 1 | The Amazing World of Psychiatry. Background to Creating A Blog Model of the Insular Cortex I’ve been reviewing a lot of information on this blog which can be used in lots of ways. What i’ve wanted to do is to try and put some of this information together to come up with something new and potentially useful. I’ve chosen to develop a model of the Insular Cortex which is rather simple and speculative, based as it is on 3 research findings.
As pointed out in an earlier article, my hope is to use this blog to create an interaction with the readers to drive the model forwards. The Insular Cortex is potentially quite an important part of the brain as it receives lots of connections from other parts of the brain. The ‘Open Model’ The model is what I would refer to as an ‘open model’ in that it can be contributed to and developed by the community. Brief Overview of the Insular Cortex So i’ll begin with a brief overview of the insular cortex – not too much at this stage as we’ll be filling the model out over time. The E Number 1. Individual differences in emotion-cognition interactions: emotional valence interacts with serotonin transporter genotype to influence brain systems involved in emotional reactivity and cognitive control.
1Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA2Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA3Department of Integrative Systems Biology, Research Center for Genetic Medicine, Children's National Medical Center, Washington, DC, USA The serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) influences emotional reactivity and attentional bias toward or away from emotional stimuli, and has been implicated in psychopathological states, such as depression and anxiety disorder. The short allele is associated with increased reactivity and attention toward negatively-valenced emotional information, whereas the long allele is associated with increased reactivity and attention toward positively-valenced emotional information.
The neural basis for individual differences in the ability to exert cognitive control over these bottom-up biases in emotional reactivity and attention is unknown, an issue investigated in the present study. Awareness of the Functioning of One's Own Limbs Mediated by the Insular Cortex? Hans-Otto Karnath1, Bernhard Baier1, and Thomas Nägele2 +Show Affiliations The Journal of Neuroscience, 3 August 2005, 25(31): 7134-7138; doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1590-05.2005 Abstract Normally, we are aware of the current functions of our arms and legs. However, this self-evident status may change dramatically after brain damage. Introduction Normally, we are aware that our arms and legs belong to us and not someone else. In recent years, new tools of lesion mapping became available that reduce significantly the uncertainty brought in by the procedures used in previous anatomical studies and allow direct comparison with control patients (for review, see Rorden and Karnath, 2004).
Materials and Methods Clinical investigation. Table 1. Demographic and clinical data of all right-brain-damaged patients with hemiparesis/hemiplegia Visual field defects were assessed by standardized neurological examination. Lesion analysis. Results Figure 1A illustrates lesion density plots for each group. Figure 1. What can we learn about emotion by studying psychopathy? Emotion is the major driver of all human and animal behavior, including social behavior—it is emotion that literally moves us to seek or escape positive and negative consequences (LeDoux, 2012). Many unanswered questions remain about the nature of human emotion and are the topic of vibrant ongoing debates: are different emotions qualitatively distinct, emerging from separable neurobiological processes, or can emotions be more accurately described dimensionally in terms of arousal and valence (Russell and Barrett, 1999; Barrett et al., 2007; Izard, 2007; Panksepp, 2007; LeDoux, 2012)?
If distinct neurobiological events contribute to the generation of different emotions, which brain structures are most relevant to the emergence of these emotions (Panksepp, 2007; Vytal and Hamann, 2010; Lindquist et al., 2012)? And finally, how do emotions we experience pertain to our perceptions of and responses to emotions in others (Zahavi, 2008; Heberlein and Atkinson, 2009)? Psychopathy. Why wonder is the most human of all emotions – Jesse Prinz. When I was growing up in New York City, a high point of my calendar was the annual arrival of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus — ‘the greatest show on earth’.
My parents endured the green-haired clowns, sequinned acrobats and festooned elephants as a kind of garish pageantry. For me, though, it was a spectacular interruption of humdrum reality – a world of wonder, in that trite but telling phrase. Wonder is sometimes said to be a childish emotion, one that we grow out of. But that is surely wrong. As adults, we might experience it when gaping at grand vistas. I was dumbstruck when I first saw a sunset over the Serengeti. We also experience wonder when we discover extraordinary facts. First, let’s be clear what we’re talking about. These bodily symptoms point to three dimensions that might in fact be essential components of wonder. English contains many words related to this multifarious emotion. Smith’s analysis appears in his History of Astronomy (1795). 21 June 2013. Why wonder is the most human of all emotions – Jesse Prinz.
Unpleasant words and pictures make us move more slowly. In much the same way that an animal freezes or slows at the sight of a predator, humans are automatically slowed down when they see or read something unpleasant. That’s according to Benjamin Wilkowski and Michael Robinson at North Dakota State University. They presented 38 students with a series of pictures that were either positive (e.g. a passionate couple), negative (e.g. a gun placed to someone’s head) or neutral (e.g. a basket). After the presentation of each picture, the students had to identify whether the screen was showing one or two dots, and then press the appropriate number on a button box as quickly as possible. They had to do this three times after each picture to ensure any effects weren’t simply due to difficulty disengaging their attention from the last picture.
A final experiment featuring a joystick, showed negative words slowed the speed with which participants moved the joystick up and down, but did not slow the actual onset of their movement. HOW ARE YOU FEELING. Feeling A Little Blue May Mask Our Ability To Taste Fat. Feeling down? It could be messing with your ability to taste the fat in that carton of ice cream. (NPR) So, here's the scenario: You're feeling a little blue, then you watch an emotional movie and dig into a bowl of ice cream.
Are you aware of how fattening your comfort food is? Likely not. A new study finds that temporary, strong emotions, like the sadness we experience from a weepy movie, can significantly decrease our ability to taste — or perceive — the amount of fat we're eating. "Strong emotions can confuse our fragile sense of taste perception," Elissa Epel , a health psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, told The Salt by email. "Stress signals danger and should make us detect [tastes like] bitter more strongly," Epel says. Participants in the study experienced a stronger sensitivity to bitter, sweet and sour tastes after watching emotional videos with storylines that were both happy and sad. Then, the participants were asked to watch video clips. Are You Happy? You Might Have Hypocretin to Thank. Move over dopamine, there’s a new “pleasure” molecule that could broaden our understanding of the chemistry of joy, laughter, addiction and even anger.
As prolific as the recent research on dopamine has been, neuroscientists have long recognized that all of the subtle varieties of human happiness couldn’t possibly be embodied in a single brain chemical, especially one that is also released under severe stress. Enter hypocretin. Hypocretin is a brain chemical with neurons that are located in the same areas where dopamine acts to influence feelings of pleasure and reward, so the two agents probably work together. Also known as orexin because two different groups discovered it simultaneously, for years it was primarily associated with sleep and appetite. In a new study published in Nature Communications, Siegel’s group now reports that hypocretin-1 (there are two types of the brain chemical) levels rise in concert with positive emotions, social interactions and, oddly, anger. Emotional memory retrieval. rTMS stimulation on left DLPFC increases the positive memories. A suggestive hypothesis proposed that the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) may be identified as the site of emotion-memory integration, since it was shown to be sensitive to the encoding and retrieval of emotional content.
In the present research we explored the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in memory retrieval of positive vs. negative emotional stimuli. This effect was analyzed by using an rTMS paradigm that induced a cortical activation of the left DLPFC. Subjects were required to perform a task consisting of two experimental phases: an encoding phase, where some lists composed by positive and negative emotional words were presented to the subjects; a retrieval phase, where the old stimuli and the new stimuli were presented for a recognition performance. The rTMS stimulation was provided during the retrieval phase over the left DLPFC. On the distinction of empathic and vicarious emotions. Introduction The human ability to infer others' emotions, thoughts or intentions is a central mechanism in creating meaningful social interactions.
Accordingly, the question of how we develop a representation of our interaction partners' minds and emotions has been the focus of various disciplines such as social psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and biology. In the last decade the social neurosciences, specifically, have put tremendous efforts into disentangling the neural networks involved in this ability. Most of this research has concentrated on the phenomenon of “empathy.”
Empathy has been defined as the state where people (i.e., perceivers )represent the same emotion they are observing or imagining in another person (i.e., social targets ) with full awareness that the source of their own experience is the other's emotion ( De Vignemont and Singer, 2006 ). Two Processes of Understanding Others' Emotions: Mirroring and Mentalizing Dissociating Vicarious and Empathic Emotions. Paul Bloom: The Case Against Empathy. In 2008, Karina Encarnacion, an eight year-old girl from Missouri, wrote to President-elect Barack Obama with some advice about what kind of dog he should get for his daughters. She also suggested that he enforce recycling and ban unnecessary wars. Obama wrote to thank her, and offered some advice of his own: “If you don’t already know what it means, I want you to look up the word ‘empathy’ in the dictionary.
I believe we don’t have enough empathy in our world today, and it is up to your generation to change that.” This wasn’t the first time Obama had spoken up for empathy. Two years earlier, in a commencement address at Xavier University, he discussed the importance of being able “to see the world through the eyes of those who are different from us—the child who’s hungry, the steelworker who’s been laid off, the family who lost the entire life they built together when the storm came to town.” This interest isn’t just theoretical. This enthusiasm may be misplaced, however. Emotion regulation choice: selecting between cognitive regulation strategies to control emotion.
Consider the anger that arises in a heated argument with your romantic partner, or the dreadful anxious anticipation in the dentist's waiting room prior to a root canal procedure. Our daily lives are densely populated with events that make us emotional. Luckily, however, we developed numerous ways to control or regulate our emotions in order to adapt ( Gross, 2007 ; Koole, 2009 for reviews). A central remaining challenge to explain adaptation, involves understanding how individuals choose between the different emotion regulation strategies in order to fit with differing situational demands.
Specifically, when is the aforementioned romantic partner or dental patient more likely to “put aside” or disengage from the emotional situation, and when are they more likely to “make sense” or engage with their emotional reactions? How Important are Our Emotion Regulation Choices? Emotion Regulation Choice: Emotional, Cognitive, and Motivational Determinants Acknowledgments References Bonanno, G. The ‘unnamed feeling’ named ASMR. Study Finds Brain System for Emotional Self-Control | WiredCosmos. Listening to your heart. How interoception shape... [Psychol Sci. 2010. Positive Emotions Preferentially Engage an Auditory–Motor “Mirror” System.
Neural Evidence That Human Emotions Share Core Affective Properties. Affective judgement about information relating to competence and warmth: An embodied perspective - Freddi - 2013 - British Journal of Social Psychology. New stuff: Predicting pain from the brain! | Lauren Atlas. On the valence of surprise. - PubMed Mobile. The Golden Rule: Theirs and Ours by Paul Street | ZSpace. Mining Books To Map Emotions Through A Century : Shots - Health News. Envy is a stronger motivator than admiration. Emotional memory study reveals evidence for a self-reinforcing loop. Communal and agentic behaviour in response to facial emotion expressions - aan het Rot - 2013 - British Journal of Psychology. Ruminating About Stressful Events May Increase Inflammation In The Body. Cognition - To push or not to push? Affective influences on moral judgment depend on decision frame. ARTNATOMY/ARTNATOMIA. NeuroImage - Distinct brain mechanisms for conscious versus subliminal error detection.
Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism. [Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011. Biological Psychology - The impact of emotion on the perception of graded magnitudes of respiratory resistive loads. Toxic Emotional Experiences: What they are, How they affect us, How to avoid them. Stephen T Asma – The evolution of emotion. Laughter Among Deaf Signers. How Mark Changizi conquered colorblindness with glasses. The unsexy truth about dopamine | Science | The Observer. Extreme fear experienced without the amygdala. Consciousness and Cognition - The perception of visual emotion: Comparing different measures of awareness.
The 'smell' of other people's anxiety makes us take more risks. There's More to Life Than Being Happy - Emily Esfahani Smith. The 5-HT1D/1B receptor agonist sumatriptan... [J Psychopharmacol. 2013. On embodied cognition and the problem of mental representation | Cognitive Philosophy. 21 Emotions For Which There Are No English Words [Infographic] Disgust Sensitivity Extends to Visual Perception. Victory Or Defeat? Emotions Aren't All In The Face. Could boredom be curable? - Ideas. Docs.autismresearchcentre.com/papers/2006_Golan_etal_AdultCAMbattery.pdf. Brain circuits run their own clocks - life - 30 October 2012. Fear really does have a smell. Feelings of Disgust and Disgust-Induced Avoidance Weaken following Induced Sexual Arousal in Women.
'Psychopaths' have an impaired sense of smell. Express your emotions and feel less fear. 3 Pillars of Motivational Psychology. Facial emotional expressions are not universal. Oxytocin induces preservation of social - PubMed Mobile. Do Emotions Lie? 10 Things Every Teacher Needs to Know About Emotions and Learning. Harnessing the Power of Awe to Change Your Life | Parenting Tips. Study finds how stress, depression can shrink the brain. Guilt and Leadership. Worldwide, pride and shame are expressed in the same way. A Single Brain Structure May Give Winners That Extra Physical Edge.
PsycNET - Direct Products. “Both of Us Disgusted in My Insula”: Mirror Neuron Theory and Emotional Empathy. When Psychologists Take Things Too Literally. A physiological marker for false memories | Science. Rare Genetic Mutations Linked To Bipolar Disorder. Brain’s Natural Marijuana-Like Chemical Could Lead to New Meds. Blending Fear and Pleasure: What is Awe and What Causes it? | Adventures in Positive Psychology. Fears of compassion and happiness in relation to alexithymia, mindfulness, and self-criticism - Gilbert - 2011 - Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice.
Gratitude As An Antidote To Aggression. Can Depression Stop Hate? Low GABA Levels Hinder Teens from Experiencing Pleasure. Depression May Weaken Brain Circuits Tied to Hate, Reward. Eat Your Guts Out: Why Envy Hurts and Why It's Good for Your Brain. Some of us experience bigger 'emotional hangovers', whether from fun activities or hurricanes. Doctor Disruption » The Evolution of Emotion. Why Dignity Matters. 'Why Should We Care?'—What to Do About Declining Student Empathy - Commentary. Are You Empathic? 3 Types of Empathy and What They Mean. Fuller Picture of Oxytocin’s Role Emerging.
The Thing Inside You That's Holding You Back. Scared to Move Forward or Change? A Surprising Revelation About Fear. The Allure of Anger and the Entitlement-Mindset Trap. The amygdala - not command central for our fear reactions? Shock and recall: Negative emotion may enhance memory, study finds. Those Darned Emotions! They can't be out-talked. Is Fear Deficit A Harbinger Of Future Psychopaths? That anxiety may be in your gut, not in your head. Study: Botox and Perceiving Emotions – Feelgood Style. Guilt, cooperation linked by neural network. Sharing in sorrow might make us happier, study shows. Independent brain pathways generate positive or negative reappraisals of emotional events. Linguistics may be clue to emotions.