079 Social NeuroScience Study Guide

3. Choose one of the four principles from Caccioppo et al.'s (2003) article Just because you're imaging the brain doesn't mean you can stop using your head and illustrate it with a concept or area of research covered later in the semester.

Principle: The functional localization of component social processes or representations is not a search for centres. Don't oversimplify the function of the brain many pieces are involved not just a 'centre' and centres likely do many things not just one. Testosterone isn't a brain centre but it is a brain thing and illustrates the point above that we tend to over simplify how our body works. There is no gene for race, there is no brain region for anger and there is no one thing testosterone does. Once people thought it involved in aggression and dominance. That turned out to be only half the story. Cortisol mediates the affect of T. Oxytocin helps with bonding and nurturing and it makes marmosets more cuddly. But it makes Dutch people less accepting of Arabs and Germans.

2. Orbitofrontal Cortex

*The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is a prefrontal cortex region in the frontal lobes in the brain which is involved in the cognitive processing of decision-making. The OFC is seen as a monitor of the reward value of stimuli and responses with the lateral OFC playing a big role in previously rewarded responses that now must be suppressed.

7. In terms of thinking about the self and others, the Medial Frontal Cortex is involved in three different functions: control and monitoring of action, monitoring of reward, and social cognition. What are the brain areas involved in each function?

1. Control and monitoring of action which is typically associated with activity in the dorsal ACC in the posterior rostal MFC 2. Monitoring of outcomes that relate to punishments and rewards, this is linked to the orbital region of the MFC 3. Social cognition which includes such things as self-reflection, personal perception and making inferences about others thoughts, these are associated anterior region of the rostral MFC

28. From an evolutionary perspective, what are two key reasons why humans experience emotion. (ie. What are the evolutionary functions of emotion?) Please explain how emotions play a role for each function.

1. Emotions help with survival what gets you eating the right food and keeps you from being something else's food, well we have a disgust response to prevent us from consuming poisons, so emotions help with survival 2. Motivation is the core of a lot of emotional experience being attracted is a motivation to make babies and reproduce and so we have a motivational drive to have sex aided by feeling good by being around someone we love so we evolved a liking for sugars even though now they are not rare

18. What are some fMRI differences that occur when looking at in-group faces vs. out-group faces.

1. FFA more active to in group faces. Seen with race but also with minimal groups. 2. Differences when mentalizing about in-groups vs. out-groups seen in the Dorsal mPFC. 3.. Scans showed greater activation in ACC's when in group members were seen to receive painful stimuli than to out group members who received stimuli that was painful

2. What are the three principles of Social Neuroscience as outlined by Cacioppo & Bernston (1992) in their article Social Psychological Contributions to the Decade of the Brain. -

1. Multiple Determinism - a target event at one level of organization may have multiple antecedents within or across levels of organization in the article they use addiction as an example of something that can be studied at multiple levels (check to see if this is a detailed example) a) corollary of proximity - the mapping between elements across levels of organization becomes more complex as the number of intervening levels of organization increases 2. Nonadditive Determinism - there are properties of the collective whole which are not always predictable from the properties of the parts until the properties of the whole have been clearly documented and studied example - giving amphetamines to monkeys on average did not change the overall level of aggressive behavior in the troupe but in fact high status monkeys became much more aggressive and low status became far less aggressive So all the parts experienced change but the whole experienced no change. Another example: Mouse fight - mice were introduced into cages where a single mouse lived. That mouse fought to protect its territory and generally won. Both mice had access to cocaine which they consumed at none significant levels. But if you examined consumption in terms of winners and losers the losers had a significant level of use where the habitual winners did not. 3. Reciprocal determinism - there are mutual influences between micro and macroscopic influences to create behavior.

9. Define stimulus-locked components and give an example of one in an ERP study.

1. Stimulus locked components are associated with the engagement of attention with a stimulus. Larger amplitudes are interpreted as a larger response. a) early components - these are of more interest to researchers studying the way attention is directed toward a stimulus b) late components - this includes P3 or P300 which is a relatively large positive deflection that peaks between 300-800 msec after a stimulus and is associated with processing novelty, better memory for stimuli that elicit P3s suggests they are involved with updating working memory They can been in the Ito and Tomelli study of in and out group where N170s and N200s were higher for in group faces and P200s were higher for out group faces. There are also: 2. Response Locked Components - these are used to look at the formation and regulation of behavioral response 3. Anticipatory ERP Components - these emerge as a participant prepares to receive a stimulus. *4. LRPs - these are a combination of stimullus locked and anticipatory waveforms and are used to characterize how an initial stimulus influences preparation for a subsequent stimulus

25. What happened in the brains of participants in the Masten et al. (2011) study where participants in an fMRI scanner watched others be excluded from Cyberball?

1. They found greater activity in the neural regions linked with mentalizing when they watched someone being excluded vs included. There were two clusters of activity in the DMPFC and in the MPFC and the VMPFC. 2. There were no social pain related neural activations in response to viewing someone experiencing social pain. 3. Greater trait empathy was related to greater activation in the dACC and the AI suggesting the more empathetic you are the more social pain related activity you experience. 4. The mPFC appears to be the more important mediator of the relationship between trait empathy and prosocial behavior.

22. Set point

A set point is the point of reference in a feedback system, where the system wants to be. It is within a set zone - the range of a variable that homeostasis tries to maintain.

20. Vagus Nerve

A cranial nerve it innervates all of the visceral organs. The vagus nerve contributes to feelings of love and other related emotions. It is part of the parasympathetic nervous system, so feeling your heart race when you are around someone, our bodily functions inform our responses to people, Vancouver low rope bridge study, where they interpret their nervousness as attraction, the brain trying to make sense of the sensations in our body and muffs up and call it love

9. Periaqueductal gray

A nucleus that forms a circle around the cerebral aqueduct. Involved in pain perception and regulation. It can increase or decrease SNS activity. It is also involved in social threat response.

39. What is the Offspring Defense paradox? How does the Steroid/Peptide Theory of Social Bonds explain this paradox?

According to the challenge hypothesis all parental behaviors are low T behaviors. But paradoxically when parents defend or sense a need to defend their offspring they have high levels of T rather than the usual low T. Infant cries increase T in men and exogenous T enhances neural responses to infant cries in women. So when there is no chance to nurture a baby's cry will raise T in men but if there is the chance to nurture it will lower T. S/P Theory of Social Bonds says behaviors should be classified on their evolutionary motivation. Any defending action will have high T and any nurturing activity will have low T. The Challenge H misses this because it focuses on the target

16. Affect

Affect - the simplist feeling that you can have that fluctuates between pleasant and unpleasant and between calm and jittrey It tends to be enduring and to have one of two basic states positive or negative. In psyc we often use emotion and affect interchangeably but not in emotions research affect is a general term and emotion is more complex and specific

27. Describe Russell's Affective Circumplex, in particular the two axes on which affect is measured. How does an individual's location on the affective circumplex affect their emotional responses?

All of your levels of affect exist in this circle and can be understood as a point on that circle defined by the intersection of perpendicular lines drawn from an X and Y axis the intersection of which is in the centre of the circle. One axis is arousal and one is pleasant and unpleasant valence. Arousal runs from bottom to top with higher points on the scale indicating greater arousal so calm at the bottom tense at the top Valence runs from left to right with low values on the left so that is less happy moving right to happy. So if you are at two oclock you would have high arousal and about 80 peak valence so you would be elated all the time.

4. Explain how the BOLD signal in fMRI is measured. Include details about what is happening in the brain and also the physics involved in measuring the neural changes.

An fMRI has three parts. 1. Magnet 2. Gradient Coil 3. Radio Frequency Coil Protons rotate constantly on their axes. They are distributed randomly throughout the body so tissue has no net charge. The magnet causes them to align. The main field is called B subscript 0. It makes the inside of the scanner like the North Pole so that everything orients to it. Then a radio frequency pulse is applied to the protons. They begin to wopple on their axes. This process is called precession and it produces measurable vertical and horizontal fields. Sometimes the protons are reoriented to 90 degrees and sometimes to 180. Sometimes both rotations are done though with MRI 90 degrees is the most common manipulation. When you remove the radio frequency the protons return to their previous magnet determined axes. Inside the unit is a gradient coil and it picks up signals from a widespread range of points so you can triangulate and see precisely what is happening where. The different points of where measurement occurs provides the key to pinpointing the location of structures. The speed at which the protons return to their magnet determined orientation tells you something about the tissue they are in. This is the decay rate back to zero and perfect verticality. What we measure is the BOLD signal the blood oxygen level dependent signal. We are measuring the deoxygenated blood or more precisely the H protons in the deoxygenated blood In the deoxygenated blood there is a greater density of H (because the O has been removed) and so the spin is more coherent and this increases the BOLD signal.

1. Social Neuroscience

An interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding how biological systems implement social processes and behavior, and to using biological concepts and methods to inform and refine theories of social processes and behavior.

35. What are some similarities and differences in the functions of neural oxytocin and vasopressin?

Both are peptide hormones so they are pretty much trapped in cells and don't move around the body much. They have receptors in similar locations. They can bind as agonists or antagonists to each others receptors. They share functions but are not identical. In voles blocking one but not both does not eliminate social approach. V is associated with physical and emotional mobilization and can help vigilance and behaviors for guarding territory and self defense O is associated with immobility without fear. That is staying in one place to give birth nurse and consensual sexual behavior. It may allow new moms to be less anxious around their newborn. O may modulate the behavioral and autonomic stress of mother child or partner separation.

13. What are the differences between the Challenge Hypothesis and the Competition Effect?

Challenge Hypothesis - Testosterone is normally low but becomes is elevated during time of challenge say, during mating season when both male and female birds had increased levels of T. Competition Effect - The level of T is determined by the outcomes of contests. Winners show increases in T or less decrease whereas losers show decreases in T.

29. Explain Barrett's theory of the construction of emotion. How does this differ from the classical view of emotion?

Classical View - Emotions are universal and have evolved because they are adaptive. - Assumes emotions are automatic that here is a stimulus response. - Research shows happiness is distinctly recognized across cultures - They are are valenced responses to external stimuli and/or internal representations that involve changes across multiple response systems (experiential, behavioral, physiological). - They are distinct from moods and have identifiable triggers. Barrett's Theory of Constructed Emotion - Emotions have a less fixed definition. - They are complex accumulations of predictions and sensations based on past experiences - They are less universal and more constructed. from the brain's continuous effort to predict coming events and its attempts to match current sensation to previous experience and its interpretation of events in the visceral organs and other body parts - Emotions are not spontaneous responses to external stimuli but constructions and mistaken attributions of internal states to external causes.

22. Compare and contrast neural responses to competition vs. cooperation. Feel free to include one or multiple contexts.

Cooperation seems to activate similar substrates as competition BUT shows more activation in reward-related brain areas, the orbitofrontal cortex ventral striatum. In general we prefer cooperation that is we see more robust activation in these areas than when we observe competition. These areas are also activated when we see fairness and cooperation shown by others. Punishment of unfair behavior or competitor also activates reward system These differences tend to be more pronounced at the group level of than at the individual level. There is MORE mentalizing activity related to out-group in competitive situations that is done in the mPFC. These are also alternative routes to high status. Success in competition pays off in dominance while successful cooperation pays off in prestige. Dominance registers in the amygdala, hippocampus and striatum.

54. Explain the relationship between depression and inflammation.

Cytokines are mediators of the immune response. Their job is to alter other cells. One kind is the pro-inflammatory cell. They initiate and maintain an inflammatory response which occurs in response to tissue injury or infections. High PIC levels are found in: - socially defeated animals - people with major depression, drugs that fight depression reduce PIC levels. - people in self-blame exercises Depression may arise as part of the PIC generated sick response. Just as the body will cut energy expenditure when sick, withdraw, be submissive, long term high PIC levels may generate chronic , negative emotional states negative cognitions, affect, motivation and behavior. Adaptive in the short term maladaptive in the long.

25. Pro-inflammatory cytokines

Cytokines are molecules that are released from immune cells to communicate with and alter the function of other cells. Pro-inflammatory cytokines are a specific category of cytokines that responds to injury or attack.

46. Why is shame so harmful for people?

Dickerson et al. suggest that shame is the affective component of a response to threats to social self preservation that includes pro-inflammatory cytokine and cortisol release. As a response to acute threats these are adaptive but long term they may have negative consequences. Shame is self conscious and arises when one perceives that they are socially deficient. Negative social evaluation is turned into negative self-evaluation. Responses to shame typically include withdrawal a desire to hide or escape. Shame may coincide with cortisol and PIC release. Cortisol is released in response to social threat. PICs can lead to motivational decreases, withdrawal and disengagement. Short term this is adaptive because it reduces energy use. Long term it may not be.

8. Compare and contrast the use of EEG and ERP.

EEG and ERP measure voltage in the brain. They generally are used to study different phenomenon. EEG can detect differences in extended states: 1. Resting states and sleep - some people are looking for a no activity state in order to try to find asymmetries in brain activities. 2. Comparisons of different emotional states 3. Tracking Activity States - monitoring the activity associated with solving a puzzle ERP is Measuring EEG in response to specific study stimuli. ERPs looks at specific reliably predictable components - positive & negative voltage peaks - that occur in response to specific known stimuli.

9. ERP

ERPs represent neural manifestations of responses to stimulus or response events The amplitude of a given ERP component represents the extent to which a brain operation engaged the stimulus and the latency at which the component peaks is thought to index the completion of the operation.

14. Empathy

Empathy is the ability to share and understand other people's affective and mental states There are four criteria: 1. The presence of an affective state in oneself 2. Isomorphism between ones own and other persons affective state 3. Elicitation of one's own affective state upon observation or imagination of another persons affective state 4. Knowledge that the other persons affective state is the source of your affective state

36. How does early childhood neglect or abuse affect the epigenetic, hormonal, and behavioral factors related to close relationships?

Epigentic Positive experiences in early life can act upon and alter the expression of specific genes by adding a methyl group to a particular site within the genome. In voles social isolation reduced the expression of the gene for the oxytocin receptor, and at the same time increased the expression of genes for the vasopressin peptide. Behavior People exposed to abuse when young may have more OT system problems caused by low OT which is linked to social withdrawal whereas high OT is linked to bonding. Hormonal Rats subjected to isolation saw up-regulation in production of vasopressin receptors. If experienced in humans could create increased vigilance and response to threat. Infants of traumatized or highly stressed parents might be chronically exposed to vasopressin, either through their own increased production of the peptide, or through higher levels of vasopressin in maternal milk. Both parental care and exposure to oxytocin in early life can permanently modify hormonal systems, altering the capacity to form relationships and influence the expression of love across the life span.

15. Mirror neurons

First found in monkeys they are neurons that fire in response to seeing behaviors performed that seem to mirror the stimulus. There is a lot of popular talk about mirror neurons but most of the studies related to MN are not done on humans and are done on single neurons so most info comes from single neurons in primates and is related to motor activity. MN would be harder to identify in humans because you cannot research in the same way. There is an assumption that there is mirror neuron activity in humans but we don't know because it is tested with scanning techniques and as there are many types of neurons mashed together in the brain and you can't distinguish possible mirror neurons from neurons which are doing other things In terms of empathy the mirror neurons seem to be primarily involved in motor activity and there is motor activity connected with emotions but they do not seem to respond to the feeling part of the emotion more the expression or conveying of emotion. Primarily involved in motor activity, not affective activity Overlap with emotional displays related to facial expressions Involved in facial mimicry, but the direct link with empathy not fully understood

52. What are two challenges to understanding the links between neuroimaging research and immunology research to better understand the link between social experiences and health?

First is the discrepancy in time scale. Immunological research is done on a large scale and follows chronic assessments of social connection and social disconnection. Neuroimaging studies focus on the physiology and neural responses to discrete social experience. Second, work needs to be done on how repeated exposure to either social connection or disconnection may affect how they related to changing the functioning and connectivity of neural systems.

3. Using what you know about self and other cognition, in-groups and out-groups, empathy, and emotion, design an intervention to reduce racist prejudice in participants. If you were successful, what changes would you expect to see in their brains?

First thing I would do is remove the word racist from the nomenclature of the study. I think the word is rude and counterproductive. It gets used to delegitimize many points of view and only serves to alienate the people you have to find compromise with in the end. In lieu of the word racism I would substitute inexperienced. Once when I was teaching in Nigeria one of my students said to me for Nigeria to be free we must kill all the white men, but not you Bob. Why do I get to live. Cause he knew me, we played soccer together, drank beer together and he thought my dancing was comically inept. Basically none. We will still have in and out groups, I will still like Barca fans better than I do Real Madrid fans. I will still have activation in my ventral striatum when I see one get shocked. My FFA will still process people I know personally differently than they process the faces of strangers. Times in the IAT may go down but there is a reasonable chance I will always view other whites more favorably that I do other rational groups at least by the millisecond standards of that test.

17. Interoceptive System

From Barrett Interoception is your brain's representation of all sensations from your internal organs and tissues the hormones and your blood and immune system. There is a lot of action here and it is one of the core ingredients of emotion. Interoceptive system that is monitoring our body from moment to moment and interpreting what is happening.. There is a peripheral system that sends info to the insula and includes the heart kidneys bladder skin hormones lungs stomach intestines bone immune cell. All of this info goes to the insula and is then interpreted as emotion

21. Homeostasis

Homeostasis is the tendency of internal states to stay the same. Many homeostatic systems, say heart rate, hormone levels have a set point with a set zone which the body tries to stay within or return to when forced to leave Stress is anything that deviates the body from homeostasis.

37. Dr. MacGruber wants to start integrating oxytocin nasal spray into his therapy with people with attachment disorder? Why would he want to do this? Do you think this is a good idea? Support your answer with evidence.

He would want to do this because recent experiments show that OT spray can facilitate social behaviors including eye contact and social cognition. He thinks the extra OT would overcome some of the attachment disorder created reluctance to engage in social activity. I think the idea is a bit dodgy. His patients have not learned to read cues and body language. They have no loser radar. Exogenous OT has been shown to facilitate marmoset and vole bonding but they likely have less complicated sexual scripts than humans do. So you do not want to increase the desire for sex, intimacy and affiliation in people who haven't learned how to obtain them. Exogenous injections of OT did relieve depression in socially isolated prairie voles but this backfire and create people who want what they can't have more than they did before.

23. Social Threat What is social threat

Humans are a highly social species who depend on mutual cooperation for survival. Social rejection or isolation is therefor perceived as a threat to our survival and evokes responses similar to those caused by more tangible acute threats. Physiological responses can be as strong as physical survival and evidence that social pain is linked with physical pain in the brain. Exclusion, rejection, isolation and loneliness, shame and embarrassment are all social threats that produce stress responses.

21. How did Ito and Tomelleri's results demonstrate a separation between categorization and stereotyping in their article Seeing is not stereotyping: The functional independence of categorization and stereotype activation. Do you think the neural response would change if they added a minimal group condition to their study? Why or why not?

I and T did a series of implicit association tests using black and white faces and guns and insects. The guns being thought to be a stereotypically associated more with Blacks. People responded more quickly to guns after seeing a Black face. But this happened only when told to focus on race. In the second condition when they were asked to look for a dot on the faces there was no difference in response rates. This is evidence for reduced implicit stereotyping. I would not argue we treat in and out groups the same way. I acknowledge that you can create differences in the lab by randomly assigning people to in and out groups. However minimal groups have not been together long enough to acquire stereotypes. In the I and T study Blacks were not associated with insects. Insects are yucky and have a negative valence. if straight prejudice were driving the associations they should have been associated with with guns and insects more equally. If you changed the objects to positive valance vs negative but with no stereotypical associations yes there would be a similar difference but with these object no.

8. BOLD (fMRI)

In MRI we measure where the tissue is not what is happening in it. With fMRI we measure hemodynamic changes, that is we use changes in the oxygen level in the blood flow to infer where brain activity is occurring. What we measure is the BOLD signal the blood oxygen level dependent signal. We are measuring the deoxygenated blood or more precisely the H protons in the deoxygenated blood.

53. Explain the acute and chronic effects of HPA and SNS activation in terms of inflammatory processes.

In response to stress the SNS acts swiftly to produce nor epinephrine and to divert body resources to fight and flight activities so that HR and BP rise, more blood heads to the muscles, eyes dilate, digestion is put on hold. This happens faster that a tiger can jump on you. The HPA responds to stress more slowly by facilitating the release of cortisol which eventually feeds back to the hypothalamus to restore homeostasis. This frees up the release of energy stores for more fighting and flighting if you are fortunate enough to have options at that point. This is all adaptive in the short term but chronically elevated cortisol suppresses immune function which leads to more infections which leads to more PICs. Pro-inflammatory cytokines have been linked to many diseases and increased morbidity. Because part of the SNS and PIC generated actions are to conserve energy

1. I have identified the phrase "Context Matters" as a key thread that weaves through many areas of research in Social Neuroscience. What does this mean? How does this differentiate Social Neuroscience from other forms of neuroscience. What are examples in two distinct areas of Social Neuroscience that demonstrate the importance of this phrase.

It means you cannot predict our behavior the way you could predict the movement of an asteroid by applying Newton's laws of motion. The asteroid obeys three laws and it you know those laws have a good telescope and a laptop you can predict every thing the asteroid will do in the next millennium. Human behavior has not yet been explained by three laws. In fact even with a lot more laws you cannot explain what we will do because it varies from situation to situation. Neuroscience works fine for asteroids, in fact some of the imaging techniques are all physics. But that doesn't work for social neuroscience we have to have room for responses to stimuli. 1. Dutch OT nasal spray 2. Empathy and cheaters/unfair plays - more trait empathy higher activation in dACC and IA

14. In Mehta and Josephs' (2010) study Testosterone and cortisol jointly regulate dominance: Evidence for a dual-hormone hypothesis what would they have concluded about the relationship between testosterone and dominance behaviors in leaders if they had only measured testosterone? How does the Dual-Hormone hypothesis improve our understanding of the relationship between testosterone and dominance behaviors?

In their first study they had pairs of parts and assigned one to be the leader and the pairs were not acquainted. So the leader is allowed to see a pattern and has to instruct the follower to make the pattern which the follower could not see. This was recorded and then the leaders behavior were later analyzed for signs of dominance and the leader supplied a sample of saliva and it was checked for cortisol and T. Had the only measure T levels they would have found no correlation at all because the +r and -r would likely have cancelled each other out and without the C predictor they would never have untangled the relationship. What they did find was: When C was low, T levels +r with dominance behavior. When C was high, T levels were - r with dominance behavior So C influences the level of T. The DH hypothesis showed that rather than be a straight T is +r with dominance it is influenced by C being +r when C is low and -r when C is high.

41. According to the Steroid/Peptide Theory of Social Bonds, what kinds of behavior can we expect from someone when they have high levels of T versus when they have low levels of T?

In this theory hormones are related to goals. OT to bonding goals and T to social goals. High T is related to competition, which is related to social behavioral contexts that involve acquiring or keeping resources - territory status mating chances offspring. These may include sexual activity offspring defense, guarding partner, jealousy and acquiring status and territory. Low T is related to nurturance - social behavior that involves loving warm contact with people. These include grooming, feeding, pair bonding. Pair bonded individuals have lower T than singles when the bonds involve nurturant intimacy. Lower t is linked to parental responses and feelings and T administration decreases empathy. Unlike the challenge hypothesis they say low T is linked to nurturance in any context.

4. Another theme that we have discussed this semester is that humans are a social species? What does this mean? Provide evidence from at least three areas of study that demonstrate that humans are inherently social.

It means the miserable life that I have been leading for the past ten weeks of 12-14 hour long study days trapped in the windowless basement junk room are killing me. Not that I needed science to tell me. More cheerfully put it means your life will be a lot better if there are a lot of people in it. But we are not inherently social. We are calculatedly social. We are social because it pays off in survival. But we do not love everyone equally. We have a decided preference for people who are in our ingroup over people in out groups even when the only thing that puts people in our ingroup is random assignment. The fact that there is not reason for the those groups to exist does not stop the FFA from processing them differently. FFA and Faces Another example of calculated sociability is our response to social threat to display submission, hang our heads look dejected. What is social about ehirarchies but we accept inferior places in them because long term it is better to serve in hell than rule in a kingdom of one. Submission to social threat Empathy. We do feel it for others but we do not feel it equally. Cyberball vs cheaters or rival soccer fans. cyberball vs cheaters

6. Choose one example of a study that differentiated between cognitions about the self or cognitions about others. What neural differences were found?

Kelley et al. Participants were shown a sequence of cards that contained cues to take a certain type of decision.: about a trait and if it applied to you, about a trait and if it applied to then president Bush, whether the trait was printed in capital letters or not. There was also a baseline card that required participants to stare at a plus sign on the card. The judgments were expected to produce different patterns of memory activation where there would be more for self than Bush and Bush than case. Self judgments when compared to other judgments showed less de-activation in the MPFC and the posterior cingulate. Self related knowledge may be stored in the MPFC. This study suggests that a region of the MPFC is selectively engaged in self-referential judgments. Lesion studies seem to support this view, as damage to certain areas eliminates day dreaming and introspection.

55. If someone is socially isolated, what happens to their HPA axis activity and what are the long-term physiological and health outcome effects?

Loneliness is linked to chronically elevated HPA activity though it is not clear that loneliness increases SNS activity. Social connection/reward system reduces HPA and SNS activity Several studies have linked loneliness to increased all cause mortality in older adults 1. Impaired cognitive function and dementia 2. Cardiovascular disease 3. Type II diabetes 4. Higher levels of depression and anxiety 5. Reduced self-regulation lonely people have much more difficulty kicikg bad habits and addictions. (emotional and behavioral) Your immune system will functions more regularly and the opioids from the reward system will inhibit pro-inflammatory cytokines when you are not socially isolated.

5. Are human faces a special category of stimuli in terms of neural processing? Provide evidence to support your answer.

Maybe. In terms of recognizing them there seems to be an area that gets activated for faces that does not get activated by most non face objects. Prosopagnosia and pareidolia so if facial recognition can be lost it must have been had. No study has ever shown that the area responds to something that is not a face (or at least a face containing or face like object). However a few experiments have shown response in these areas to cars, birds when they are of special interest to people Facial recognition or more precisely gleaning of the information that is available on a face likely involves multiple systems. 1. There is an identity component - we need to pinpoint the specific individual. 2. There is likely another component devoted to recognizing another person's expression. When people with other areas of expertise were tested these experts showed more activation in the FFA when they were looking at objects from their area of expertise than other objects. However FFA response to the objects from their field of expertise was always below the FFA response to faces. We know the FFA is involved in recognizing invariant aspects of faces and recognizing different people regardless of whether they are smiling or frowning. The superior temporal sulcus is involved in the changeable aspects of faces and perceiving eye gaze and lip movement. This helps supplement the auditory system. So now these three components: 1. The Inferior Occipetal Gyrus (IOG)is involved early in identifying face information and it has projections to the FFA and the STS. 2. The FFA is involved with the consistent components of faces which allow us to identify unique individuals. 3. The Superior Temporal Sulcus (STS) is concerned with the changeable aspects of faces, perception of eye gaze in others, their expression and monitoring their lip movement.

23. Define mentalizing and explain how it is different than empathy.

Mentalizing or theory of mind - Psychopaths have this they can envision another's mental state but do not share the feeling, they can mimic feeling it but do not feel it. There is no emotional component to mentalizing. When I mentalize I may accurately gauge your emotion but it is part my assessing the situation and I may even use this information to take advantage of you and promote my interests over yours. Empathy has no goal. It is the ability to share and understand other people's affective and mental states There are four criteria: 1. The presence of an affective state in oneself 2. Isomorphism between ones own and other persons affective state 3. Elicitation of one's own effective state upon observation or imagination of another persons affective state 4. Knowledge that the other persons affective state is the source of your affective state

17. What are the ERP differences that occur when responding to in-group faces vs. out-group faces?

N170 & N200 amplitudes are larger for in-group, the N170 is believed to fall between 120 and 200ish and is thought to be preconscious and the N200 is thought to be conscious, but both peaks are larger when you are looking at your in group. This has been replicated in several studies that include race and minimal group comparisons. The P200 amplitude is larger for out-group.

10. N170 (ERP)

N170 (Right hemisphere) - during face processing a peak will appear at N170. This mean there is a spike in electrical activity. The letter indicates if it is positive or negative while the number can incidate either the number of milliseconds after the event that triggered it the peak appear or when it is a smaller whole what number in the sequence of peaks the peak is. The N says this is a negative ERP peak. It is a stimulus locked component and occurs early so is thought to represent unconscious activity.

32. Using a specific example of emotional control from Oschner and Gross (2005), The Cognitive Control of Emotion, what are the neural mechanisms involved in controlling emotion?

One type of emotional control is known as reappraisal, and involves reinterpreting the meaning of a stimulus to change one's emotional response to it. In general, studies have found that reappraisal of negative emotion activates dorsal ACC and PFC systems that support the selection and application of reappraisal strategies, and decreases, increases or maintains activity in appraisal systems such as the amygdala or insula in accordance with the goal of reappraisal. There has been variability in the precise prefrontal and appraisal systems recruited across studies, however, which might be attributable to differences in the nature of the stimuli used and the goal or content of reappraisal strategies

10. What type of stimuli might elicit a strong P3 amplitude in an ERP study. Why?

P3 or Late Positive Potential (LPP) are generated by sentences or stimuli that violate stereotypes or provide novel information. 300-800 ms after stimulus - this is very long in brain time These appear after processing novel or unexpected stimuli. There appears to be a link with working memory because the higher the peak a stimulus creates the more likely you are to remember it. They are stimulus locked components. The latency is thought to represent categorization time or is thought to reflect the time needed to classify a stimulus.

12. How do peptide hormones differ from steroid hormones?

Peptide hormones have large structures and do not pass through cell membranes so they can only be measured in the body in areas they occur. Many will never appear in saliva. Steroid hormones move very freely around the body and so levels in saliva are good indications of their levels in the blood. Saliva is much easier to collect and less stressful on participants that blood or spinal fluid collection so it is the preferred research method.

31. What are the areas in the brain involved in visceromotor prediction? How does interoceptive prediction of emotion work?

Quite a few. Information from the visceral organs travels up the vagus nerve to the primary interoceptive cortex in the dorsal sector of the mid to posterior insula where they are compared against predicted sensations. Errors, that is places where the prediction and experience have failed to match, are passed to the dorsal Amygdala, dACC, and ventral anterior Insula where they promote learning and are added to the bank of expectations. According to Barrett interoception is a key ingredient in emotion. The brain is always predicting what will happen next. It does that by sensing and creating activity in the body and budgeting - allotting resources - for upcoming actions which also result in sensations which go into the emotion creating mix. It matches these with its best predictions about what is happening in the body to produce emotions. ACC, dorsal amygdala, & ventral anterior insula send visceromotor prediction signals which send info back to the body to tell it how to respond. The interoceptive prediction signals predict stimuli and interoceptive error signals correct it. ·The interoceptive system predicts human emotion and regulates urges. For example, if a dog feels the need to hump another dog, it will automatically go for it because they do not have inhibitory mechanisms that filter these motivations. When humans get the urge to hump someone, they do not because their cortex monitors and alters our emotional impulses.

33. A researcher wants to test how attentional distraction works when exposing participants to an aversive stimulus that evokes emotional pain. What areas in the brain do you think you would see increased activation and which areas do you think you would see decreased activation?

Reduced activity in pain-related areas 1. Mid-cingulate cortex 2. Insula 3. Thalamus 4. Periacqueductal gray Increased activity in these areas which are related to cognitive control 1. Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) 2. ACC 3. lateral and medial PFC.

26. Decety et al. (2010) conducted a study where participants were shown identical stimuli and told the person was in pain from tinnitus that they contracted a) when healthy b) because they contracted HIV/AIDS through a blood transfusion c) because they contracted HIV/AIDS through drug use. What were the neural differences between the groups?

Responses in their PAG ACC and AI were measured. In all three areas the greatest response was to the no fault AIDS by transfusion condition. The healthy condition produced the second greatest response in the rAI and aMC. The AIDS through drug use had the second highest response in the PAG. The highest overall activation was seen in the cMCC though it is not clear inter-region comparisons mean much. The lowest was seen in the periacquetal grey. When they asked how much pain the people thought the person was in they found that people who got AIDS from the transfusion were seen as being in more pain and reported distress was highest in this condition as well. We see our own experiences and assumptions about pain override target's actual reported experience of pain

24. What is the role of the interoceptive cortex in empathy. Does this differ from its role in feeling our own emotions?

Role of Interoceptive Cortex and Insula in Empathy The AI and ACC are part of the interoceptive cortex and represent our own feelings allowing us to form subjective representations of what we feel. This in turn allows us to predict the effects of emotional stimuli on our own bodies. When we experience empathy the AI and ACC also show activation, suggesting similar processes are involved in feeling our own emotions and the emotions of others. However part of the input into our emotions at least according to Barrett is sensations from our internal organs which are treated as external sensations by the brain contribute to our perception of what our emotions are. Empathetic responses may create feelings in the organs but these would be in the effect end of the equation not the cause end. So there is overlap but also a basic qualitative difference

44. What are the three phases of stress according to Selye (1950). How do these related to acute and chronic stress?

Selye defined three stages 1. alarm stage - this is the system working as it should but the stress lasts longer than we are designed to endure 2. resistance stage if the stressor does not go away you start to divert resources to fight the stressor and cuts back on regular bodily maintenance 3. exhaustion stage - this was when the rats died because they had been stressed for so long but in people we more get burnout acute stress vs chronic stress Stress includes: Stressors (external or internal) Cognitive processing Stress response

56. Why is perceived loneliness so harmful? What are some health outcomes related to perceived loneliness?

Several studies have linked loneliness to increased all cause mortality in older adults. Loneliness is linked to chronically elevated HPA activity, results for SNS are not as consistent. People who consider themselves lonely rate their social interactions below what non lonely folk do. Loneliness also predicts: 1. Impaired cognitive function and dementia 2. Cardiovascular disease 3. Type II diabetes 4. Higher levels of depression and anxiety 5. Reduced self-regulation (emotional and behavioral) Even if the person does not report themselves as lonely their body is responding like it is lonely by having stress responses. People who are lonely have a much harder time regulating behavior and quitting addictions. Feelings of loneliness may be the biggest health threats we have. Your immune system will functions more regularly and the opioids from the reward system will inhibit pro-inflammatory cytokines when you are not socially isolated.

47. What are the behavioral actions associated with feelings of shame? What is the function of these behaviors?

Shame arises as a response to threats to social status/acceptance. What begins as a negative social evaluation becomes a negative self-evaluation. Shame behaviors are related to submission and withdrawal. People often speak of wanting to hide or disappear. They assume submissive body postures, avoid eye contact and often hang their heads. These behaviors have parallels in primates and other animals and serve as a form of communication which conveys a desire to deescalate conflict and appease and adversary.

26. Stress

Stress is anything that deviates the body from homeostatisis. Over the short term it is adaptive but in the long term it causes problems.

1. Social Neuroscience involves multiple levels of analysis. Choose two levels of analysis and explain how each would contribute to the understanding of why people smoke cigarettes.

That research can focus on phenomenon occurring at many different levels is a key part of neuroscience. 5. System - you can look at the limbic system or the reward system 8. Sociocultural context - social values influence as well and can contribute to say depression Having multiple levels of analysis adds to the potential for research to find answers. So social cultural level people are refinforced to smake by the company of smokers and the coolness of smking and then the reward system where the NA and other brain bits make reward you with dopamnine for smoking and niccotine makes this system work evern more effectively

45. What is the role of the SNS vs. the HPA axis in the stress response?

The SNS & norepinephrine are part of the fight or flight system. When a threat is sensed the hypothalamus initiates arouses the sympathetic nervous system. The SNS arousal stimulates the medulla of the adrenal glands secreting the catecholamine called = Epinephrine (E) + (NE). This leads to: increases blood pressure increases heart rate increases sweating constriction of peripheral blood vessels This is the immediate response to an acute stressor. The HPA & cortisol release are slower to respond (occurs a few minutes after the stressor) HPA serves a metabolic function by increasing the availability of glucose & breaking down protein. It does this by: 1. The hypothalamus releases CRH or (CRF) 2. CRF stimulates the pituitary gland to secrete ACTH 3. ACTH travels in the blood to the adrenal glands stimulating the release of glucocorticoids (cortisol) Restores homeostasis when it feeds back to the hypothalamus.

6. T1 (MRI)

The T1 component or T1 signal which measures time. This is used in structural MRI and measures how long it takes for the protons to realign with the magnetic field after the radio frequency has been shut off.

4. Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex

The dorsal ACC wraps around the corpus callosum and has been associated with tasks like attention and error monitoring. Activation there has been correlated with empathy. It is related to increasing activation of emotions and pain activation and top down aversive experiences.

3. Reciprocal Determinism

The idea that there are mutual influences between micro and macroscopic influences to create behavior. So that the factor that influence a second factor is then influenced by the change brought about by the first factor

5. Anterior Insula

The insula is a part of the cortex that is tucked in between the temporal and parietal and frontal lobes and it is involved in almost every emotional thing that gets studied. So the anterior insula would be the frontish part of that. Projections from thalamus and sensorimotor cortices represent the body in the anterior insula So you have a minimap of the body in the insula so sensations are rerepresented there the sensations and the position of your body. The anterior insula is involved in predicting anticipating and learning about affect. Also involved in social support system Personally experiencing disgust and observing another person's expression generated by an odor generated similar responses in the anterior insula (AI) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).

6. Posterior Insula

The insula is a part of the cortex that is tucked in between the temporal and parietal and frontal lobes and it is involved in almost every emotional thing that gets studied. The posterior insula is the back part of that. The personal experience of pain also activates more posterior parts of the insula. It may play a role in mapping somatic states are receives info about internal states carried up the brain stem.

24. Shame

The intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.

1. Lateral Prefrontal Cortex

The lateral PFC at least the ventral and medial bits are involved in controlling and reducing emotion. It becomes more active when you are trying to divert your attention aware from pain and focus on something else. It also activate in the top down invoking of aversive experiences and in unlearning fear responses.

7. Medial Prefrontal Cortex

The mPFC is located in the front of the cerebral cortex. It is involved in 1. Control and monitoring of action 2. Monitoring reward 3. Social cognition that is thinking about the self and thinking and making judgments about others. The mPFC appears to be the more important mediator of the relationship between trait empathy and prosocial behavior.

48. What are the components of the primary social threat neural system according to Eisenberger and Cole in their article Social Neuroscience and Health? What is the role of each component in responding to social threat?

The main components in the primary social threat neural system are the SNS and HPA axis. Different threats engage each part differently. Prolonged activation of these systems might be expected during periods of prolonged social isolation. Chronic social isolation can affect HPA axis cotisol's ability to produce anti-inflammatory responses. This leads to increased expression of the inflammatory genes in the immune cells. In the SNS social isolation leads to increased PIC levels and increased PIC gene expression. In addition to inflammation the SNS and HPA are involved in other processes that may promote health problems as well.

40. What is the Aggression paradox? How does the Steroid/Peptide Theory of Social Bonds explain this paradox?

The paradox is that peptide hormone are generally tied to intimacy within social bonds but sometimes they contribute to aggression. This is resolved by dividing aggression into two kinds of aggression antagonistic aggression and protective aggression. Antagonistic aggression tries to get you stuff you don't have like territory and mates but protective aggression is to defend infants fight off intruders.s So some kinds of aggression increase peptide hormones and facilitate social bonds while other increase T and inhibit social bonds Both types of aggression actually increase T but only protective aggression increases peptides. This could work because there are more receptors for peptides than T in neural substrates for social bonds or a stronger affinity for peptides than T within social bond related nuclei.

2. Social Psychology

The scientific study of how the thoughts feelings and behaviors of an individual are influenced by the actual, imaged or implied presence of others

42. In the Smith et al. (2010) study Manipulation of the oxytocin system alters social behavior and attraction ion pair-bonding primates, allithrix pencillata (Black-Pencilled Marmosets), what behaviors were most affected by the oxytocin antagonist injections?

The study was done to see if Oxytocin (OT) affects social behaviors and partner preference in the first three weeks of cohabitation of male and female marmosets. They received OT through a nasal spray and were administered an oral antagonist inhibitor. Following administration of the spray they initiated huddling with their partners more often but after the antagonist huddling and proximity decreased It also eliminated food sharing between partners Mating and territorial behavior and aggression toward new social partner did not vary with changing conditions. (These are T related, I guess) OT treated marmosets established contact with their partners before engaging the stranger but antagonists did not and antagonist Ms approached the neutral cage twice as often as OT Ms but all displayed more sexual solicitations toward the stranger.

50. Compare and contrast the social disconnection and social connection neural systems. Why do you think these two systems evolved the way they did?

The two systems have different neural circuits. Social disconnection is processed as a fundamental threat to survival. It will trigger the neural alarm system to respond as it would to survival threats. Areas involved include 1. amygdala 2. dACC 3. anterior insula 4. PAG Social connection is valuable and likely to prolong life and lead to having offspring. It leads to activation in the rewards system. Areas of interest are vmPFC which tracks safety value of stimuli and inhibits threat related responding and in areas involved in care giving behaviors, ventral stratum, septal area, opioids and OT.

30. What is the role of the visceral organs in emotion?

Their influence is seen in the Vancouver low rope bridge study, where respondents interpreted their their heightened sensations caused by crossing a scary rope bridge as arousal when they spoke to an attractive person on the other side and was more likely to call them that people who had not experienced this arousal that was unrelated but still attributed to the girl. Respondents were mistakenly attributing the sensations in their organs to the experience of talking with the attractive person rather than nerves related to the bridge crossing. Sensations from the visceral organs are interpreted as exterior signals from the brain and just like exterior sensations are interpreted on the basis of past experience you get nervous around someone you find attractive. So the organs work just like light or sound waves they supply sensations the brian can interpret to create its experience.

7. T2 (MRI)

Then there is T2 which is the decay from the horizontal alignment produced by the radio wave. This measure is called T2 and that is used in fMRI.

4. Nonadditive Determinism

There are properties of the collective whole which are not always predictable from the properties of the parts until the properties of the whole have been clearly documented and studied. example - giving amphetamines to monkeys on average did not change the overall level of aggressive behavior in the troupe but in fact high status monkeys became much more aggressive and low status became far less aggressive So all the parts experienced change but the whole experienced no change. So there may be changes but they sum up to zero

49. What are the components of the social ties/safety neural system according to Eisenberger and Cole in their article Social Neuroscience and Health? What is the functional role of this system?

There are two sets of components because this system works to accomplish two things. First is respond to cues that there are threats to our social connections. Second, detecting safety and security. The first system includes the: amygdala dACC AI PAG They are all known to play a role in threat and pain related processing. The second system includes: VMPFC which tracks the safety value of stimuli and inhibits threat related responding. Ventral striatum, septal area opioids and oxytocin which reduce threat responding and facilitate caregiving.

5. Negative Feedback

These are essential feedback loops which shut themselves off. An example is the anterior pituitary hormones are controlled through a Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Endocrine Cell axis. Releasing Hormone - hormones released by the hypothalamus and carried in a vein to the anterior pituitary gland where they stimulate the release of anterior pituitary hormones Tropic Hormone - hormones that have other endocrine glands as their target and are produced and secreted by the anterior pituitary. These are produce substances that return to the hypothalamus to turn off the production of the releasing hormone.

12. Prejudice

These are three categories of biases against groups. stereotypes - a belief that characterizes people based merely on their group membership (cognitive) prejudice - an evaluation or emotion toward people merely based on their group membership (affect) discrimination - behavior that advantages or disadvantages people merely based on ther group membership (behavior)

51. Based on what we know about pain and empathy, do you think the Eisenberger et al., (2003) study Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI study of Social Exclusion is sufficient to say physical and social pain are the same? If yes, provide evidence to support why. If no, what additional evidence would be needed to convince you?

This fMRI study tried to determine if brain regions activated by social pain were similar to those activated by physical pain. It used a cyberball game. Pain activates the ACC and the dACC is primarily associated with emotionally distressing pain. The pattern of activations very similar to those found in studies of physical pain was found for social exclusion. Activity in dorsal ACC, previously linked to the experience of pain distress, was associated with increased distress after social exclusion. But for me this is still no go. Physical pain and social pain evolved for different reasons. Animals with little bonding or social facility still feel pain. The fact that the same brain areas are used does not mean they are the same any more than an eviction notice and a love letter are the same because they are delivered by the post office.

19. Vasopression

This is another peptide hormone and receptors are in similar locations as OT receptors and they are more linked with physical and emotional action. It is more related to vigilance and aggression/protection so more linked to activity and also to aggression/disdain for out groups

8. Interoceptive Cortex

This is believed to be composed of areas of the brain that monitor information from within your body. They are used to understand/influence/control our emotional state. We use it to represent our own feelings allowing us to form subjective representations of what we feel. This allows us to predict the effects of emotional stimuli on our own bodies. Interoceptive system that is monitoring our body from moment to moment and interpreting what is happening in the visceral organs and sends information that ends up in the insula where you have a mini-map of the body so sensations are rerepresented there the sensations and the position of your body

11. Automatic Bias

This is from the Fiske reading and is said to be one of three new/recently understood forms of racism. This can be assessed by things like the Implicit attitudes test and uses response time to assess biases. The other types mentioned by Fiske are ambivalent and ambiguous.

13. Stereotype Content Model

This is related to ambivalent racism. This model has two dimensions warmth and competence and that we rate people on these. So there are four possible categories defined by theses two axes. They argue that not all stereotypes are negative but all can still be harmful. look at slide 8 for example

18. Oxytocin

This is the most studied hormone in terms of attachment it is a peptide hormone and has an amino acid base, it is water soluble and does not cross the BBB It is released in response to stress and the following bonding situations. physical contact - is reinforced by the release of O and at childbirth you get a massive relase of O and it causes uterine contractions breastfeeding - it is involved in the milk letdown reflex and it is trigger by O which has been released in response to nipple stimulation orgasm has a release of O

43. What are the cognitive and neural effects of being in a state of infatuation?

This occurs early in romantic relationships. Early love - highly infatuated - found people in love for six months or less and showed the pictures of a love partner and then of a familiar friend and for the lover there was activation in the areas below which are all linked to reward systems. Ventral Tegmental Area (rich in dopamine receptors), Nucleus Accumbens, Striatum Studies of people just dumped show similar patterns of activation because they are obsessed too. People in love will tend to be obsessed with their lover, have intrusive thoughts about them, ruminate about them. . Vagus nerve contributes to feelings of love and other related emotion, it innervates all of the visceral organs which contributes to butterflies in stomach and jitteriness at seeing lover again.

34. Choose one of the types of studies done when assessing controlled regulation of emotion. What is being studied, and what areas of the brain are active in this particular type of controlled regulation?

This study involved reputed pain control medicine that was actually a placebo. Two studies have shown that if participants believe stimuli reduce pain then less pain is experienced. The placebos produce 1. Increased activation of a). lateral and medial PFC regions related to cognitive control 2. Decreased activation of the a). amygdala b). pain related cingulate, insula and thalamic regions Exactly what is happening is not clear but it suggests placebo effects are mediated by the active maintenance of beliefs about the placebos that change the way in which stimuli are appraised because the patterns of activity are similar to those seen in reappraisal which is interpreting a stimuli in a way to change your emotional response to it.

2. Evolutionary theorists argue that humans (and other animals) are biologically wired to propagate our genes. How does this theory help us understand the mechanisms involved in the systems identified in the sections on emotion, close relationships, and social threat? How do each of these systems increase the likelihood of our genes being passed on?

To pass on our genes we need to keep alive, attract a mate, produce a child, see that child reach viability. Emotion - motivation Close R - OT and motherhood Social Threat - submission in response to social threat

38. What are some similarities and differences in the neural/hormonal systems underlying parental love vs. romantic love?

Well both involve raised levels of OT and OT levels have been shown to predict length of romantic relations in studies by Ruth Feldman in Israel. But parenting is nurturing and romantic love - as distinct from attachment and lust - involves craving, intrusive thoughts and joy in the presence of the loved one. Parental love is highly informed by OT which facilitates bonding and is present in breast feeding. As well vasopressin plays a role but these equate more with the attachment side of love. Love in its infatuation involves reward in the ventral tegmental area, the nucleus accumbens and striatum. Many love feelings related to the interoception system and the vagus nerve so getting butterflies in stomach and nervous feelings around loved one but not around the baby.

20. Using what you know about social categorization (stereotyping), prejudice, (affect/emotion), and discrimination (action), describe the sequence of neural events and areas that would be involved as someone moved from stereotypes to prejudice to discrimination.

Well this is a cheery exercise. Let's assume that activation of bias begins at first sight. That would place the FFA front and centre because it seems to scan newly encountered faces for in group out group membership and initiate the processing of ins as individuals whereas as outs are processed in terms of characteristics thought common to all out. Different ERPs would be generated as in groups tend to produce bigger N170s and N200 whereas outs produce bigger P200s. Affect is where are biases play out emotionally and if my despised other trips and falls I will feel rewarded in the ventral striatum and experience less activation in the ACC than if my in group member were similarly tripped as shown by Xu et al. In cyberball exclusion scans parts with more activation in the mPFC was most strongly correlated with writing supportive letters to people they felt sad for so I would. As we know from Xu

16. Other than testosterone and cortisol, what is another neural or hormonal system that is linked with dominance? Describe the system.

Well, we only have T because of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Gonadal Axis - HPG which leads to the production of T when the hypothalamus releases GnRH = Gonadotropin is a releasing hormone to the pituitary and it secretes LH = Luteinizing hormone which is a tropic hormone that leads to the production of T. A similar process in the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis - HPA leads to cortisol production

3. Basal Ganglia

When we are tring to increase emotion you see activation in the ACC basal ganglia and OFC Thalamus and basal ganglia are high in dopamine receptors and controls our desire to go toward something or by default away from something.

19. Gender is an area where many people easily stereotype. Using a minimal groups paradigm, describe how you would design a study to reduce gender categorization and stereotyping in the lab. What differences would you expect to see in the brain in your minimal groups paradigm vs. a control paradigm where gender is the most salient feature.

Why always reduce. I think increasing stereotypes would tell us a lot of interesting stuff as well but who am I. Well I would need two conditions with two groups each all composed of people who had never met. In the first condition the two groups would be composed of all males in one and all females in the other. All participants would be told groups were gender based. Our second condition would feature mixed gender groups and no mention would be made of gender by the experimenters. Then they would do an implicit associations test while in an fMRI testing the association between a stereotypically male objects say tools and stereotypically female object say kitchen utensils. In the first condition participants would see random pictures of men and women but in the second condition the faces would be drawn from the in and out groups. That would give us a measure of gender bias in the first condition and the effect of in group out group thinking in the second.

15. In class and in the Eisenegger et al. (2011) paper The role of testosterone in social interaction, there were several examples of the effects of injections of testosterone on social status behavior. Explain one of these findings and how it might translate to a real-life situation

Women were tested to see if how they responded to faces would be affect by administration of exogenous T. Higher T resulted in a stronger response to angry faces than to happy faces in the amygdala. (also seen in men who weren't injected but had higher baseline T). We know the amygdala responds to threat stimuli and other highly arousing stimuli. For people with extra T that means more response to angry people so one can infer there will be a greater response to threats making people more likely to be frightened or to react defensively/aggressively and raise the stakes of the encounter.

11. What was one limitation in terms of hormonal data collection for the study we did as part of the lab report for class?

there was not an identical protocol for each person, the script changed over time