These are very unique times for brain research. The aperitif for the course will thus highlight the present “brain-excitements” worldwide. You will then become intimately acquainted with the operational principles of neuronal “life-ware” (synapses, neurons and the networks that they form) and consequently, on how neurons behave as computational microchips and how they plastically and constantly change - a process that underlies learning and memory. Recent heroic attempts to realistically simulate large cortical networks in the computer will be highlighted (e.g., “the Blue Brain Project”) and processes related to perception, cognition and emotions in the brain will be discussed. For dessert we will deliberate on the future of brain research, including the questions of “brain and art”, consciousness and free will. For more information see the course promo below and read “About the course.”
Emotions
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From the course by Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Synapses, Neurons and Brains
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From the lesson
Perception, Action, Cognition and Emotions
During this module we will have a special lecture which will be given by Prof. Israel Nelken from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who will discuss "Perception, action, cognition and emotions". Until today we have focused mainly on the function of single cells and small networks. Module #8 dwells into higher level computations and especially "the story of sound". The auditory system converts sound into electrical signals. Hair cells, basilar membrane, the cochlea and others are all tools which the brain uses in order to translate the outer world into neuronal activity. The next step is perception – processing the sensory information into useful representation. One beautiful example is the case of using binaural cues for the localization of sound. Perception leads the organism to actions – the brain predicts the world and computes the action that will yield a maximal reward and avoid punishment. What happens in the case of surprises? Here, higher level computation is needed. We will end the lecture with emotions – What are they, how are they represented in the brain and how they affect our actions.
Meet the Instructors
Idan SegevProfessor
Computational Neuroscience
In the last part of this lecture, I want to discuss a little bit the issue of
emotions that are evoked by sounds. So, I want, first of all to say a few
words about emotions from the low level new scientific point of view that is
central to this course. First of all, emotions are very complex
phenomena. And they involve multiple,
manifestations. The emotions involve physiolo-,
physiological activation. For example, you can measure emotions by,
changes in skin conductance. This is what lie detectors do.
They emulsions involve expressive behavior, when a a cat become fearful it
will a a a, it will a archives its, its back, it will take, it will bring our its
nails and a, it will snomb. And finally there's the conscious
experience of emotions which is for us, actually the center of the experience.
But it's certainly not the only the only part of the biology of emotions.
So as an example happiness. Happiness can be related to faster heart
rate. So this would be the physio,
physiological activation. it causes smiling, or it is associated
with smiling, which would be the expressive behavior, and also the
conscious experience of happiness, which is the effect.
Again, for us, this is the central part of the emotional experience, but it's
certainly not the only part, the, the, the, the only part of it.
In order to understand what emotions are, we can first of all contrast them with
things that are not emotions. For example, memory is not emotion, okay.
It will be related, you feel modulated by emotions probably and certainly.
But we don't think that, that the core of the activity that of, of the mechanisms
that puts things into memory and retrieves them from memory.
The, those emotion attention, language understanding, problem solving, decision
making. planning and all, all of these type of
activities. Are not emotions and, in fact, these
activities are all grouped under cognitive processes.
So you have this distinction between emotions and cognition.
And if you now go to the emotions themselves and you try to find out what,
to define what they are, it turns out that people have great difficulties in
Saying what unifies all emotions and makes them into emotions.
So Edmund [UNKNOWN] wrote that emotions are states elicited by rewards and
punishers. States here, implicates something that
causes activity in large parts of the brain and a state.
In somethings that is co ordinate the cause many different systems of a brain.
Emotions are involved in conscious or unconscious evaluation of event so again
conscious and unconscious evaluations, the events have been To emotions.
You walked in the forest and suddenly you saw the snake and you became afraid.
So first of all you saw the snake. You need to see the snake to process the
snake to know that there is a snake, okay.
That's a lot, it is a, that's quite a lot of processing in the visual system.
Before you can evaluate the scene, you are in the presence of a snake and you
become afraid. And finally, probably one of the most
extreme positions with respect to emotions is, is expressed by Antonio
Damasio. [COUGH] Who says emotions is
preprogrammed set of coordinated bodily reactions.
So for Damasio, it's the fact that you are in a dangerous condition, and now
those many different systems attempt to act together.
You increase your heart rate, you do things that will increase blood flow to
the feet, and you start running, okay? And the, these, all of these things have
adaptive values, because you run away from the danger.
As fact as A. Demasio is concerned the effect, I mean
this conscious experience of the emotion is secondary to all of these coordinated
bodily reactions. One interesting feature of emotions is
that at least the. behaviors are eh, associated with with
eh, emotions are eh, really conserved across evolution eh, in this study you
see the, what's eh, different animals do when you put sugar on the lips.
So these are new born babies few hours after they are born, and if you put sugar
on their lips, what they will do is get the, the tongue out and lick.
Okay? And same thing happen with the orangutan
and the chimpanzee, New World monkeys, and rats.
So, all of them have this type of eh, (no period) A reaction to a good event, in
this case a little bit of sugar water. On the other hand, if you put something
that's bitter they will again do the same thing.
They will open their mouth, they will cry, they will do, they will show a lot
of negative reactions. Okay, and this mouth opening in response
to a bitter taste again is shown. in newborn babies one with downs
chimpanzee's and so up on to rats. So emotions are on the one had very
complex. The activation of many brain systems.
And on the other hand highly conserved. So they would be relatively.
Primitive,, in terms of the brain systems that are involved in them.
Eh, In the, unsurprisingly given these, this descriptions of emotions, there's a
lot of brain regions that are involved in emotional processing.
Possibly the best known one. The one that's, we hear most in the
general news is a part of the brain. It's part of the fore brain.
But it's not cortex, which is called the amygdala.
Amygdala has been associated has been associated with feel reactions.
It's when you do, when you associate a neutral stimulus with fearful outcome and
you play a sound and then you give a foot choke to an animal.
Then the animal will start to freeze to express fear, reactions to the neutral
stimulus, to the sound. And, and the change in the brain that eh,
activates this field actions happens eh, to a large extent in the amigdala.
But there are a lot of other brain structures for example.
And the VTA, VTA is eh, is, it's again not complex it's in the mid brain and it
contain neurons that eh, have dopamine in them.
Similarly, the nucleus accumbens. The nucleus accumbens is part of the fore
brain that have neurons and. and dopamine is a neurotransmitter that
is associated with good outcomes. The idea is that when something good
happens, happened to an animal or when the animal is sure that something good is
going to happen, then dopamine neurons act and release dopamine.
And in the most extreme version of this type of views, you would say, that the
goal of the mammalian vein in the world is to maximize the dopamine released over
its lifetime. So there are many types, many brain
structures that are involved in the processing of emotions.
I think they are mostly bad emotions, motor [UNKNOWN] with good emotions, there
are other parts of the brain with all kinds of names anterior cingulates,
anterior insula. Okay and there is also when the motion of
very often activities of some other sensory coltex and which is associated
with the bodily action which is the physiological activation that that is
part of the eh, eh, emulsion complex. So lets talk about music.
I will describe one study, the study that was done by Ann [UNKNOWN] in which they
study the extreme good eh, emotions that were evoked by some pieces of music,
okay, once they got chills. So, many prople have this piece of music,
that when they hear it, it creates in them such strong emotions, that they have
chills, shivers, I mean, very very strong bodily actions and in this study.
what the researchers did was to ask people to bring the, the piece that
creates, that, that creates this reaction in them.
And they verify that indeed they have signs certain signs of extreme emotional
reaction. So what you see here is the changes in
heart rate during the 90 second excerpts of a piece that caused reported chills in
one of the subjects. this was a bit from Rachmaninov's 3rd
piano concerto. And indeed, it's the position of the
chill at the point of the chills, there's an initial heart rate.
It builds up to where the chill position and then drops off.
for the same subject, they used another piece of music the piece, 90 seconds from
Barber's Adagio for strings. which did not evoke reported chills and
indeed did not cause any changes in a half trait.
Now this piece was selected because it was a chill producing piece for another
subject in the same experiment. So each subject was measured, was
measured with a, with a piece of music, when listening to a piece of music.
That produced chills and also in the in with another piece of music that did not
produce chills in it when he listened to it.
Okay and, what say, except for the, biological activation what the
researchers measured was changes in blood flow.
During during the time that they listened or heard these pieces of music, and
specifically, this is not functional in the eye, this is positron emission
tomography study pet and the muscle though are very, measures a similar.
Similar type of biologocal changes and measure differences in blood flow to
brain structures, not the idea, I mean the concept is that, blodd flow increases
to a brain structire when this brain structure is active.
We want's a, require a lot of energy in order to a, to to be active and if a
brain region become activated there are lot of firing of neurons then there will
be any increase in the blood flow to that region so a you can use this imaging
technique like functional MRI and a positron emission tomography.
In order to measure the changes in blood flow and this gives you an indication
about places in the brain where you activated eh, or activated more in one
condition compared to the other. So this is, one of the, one result eh,
eh, one result from this paper. And it shows a number of brain
structures. That got activated.
That were a more on blood flow increased with increased chill and judgement by the
subject. And this includes a anterior cingulate,
and an anterior amygdala in a place called the ventral striatum.
Which is related, among other things, to the, the dopaminergic system.
And also a decrease in the activation of the amygdala which is associated with
bad, bad emotions. In consequence the implication here is
that the subjective reaction of chilled which is produced by music.
activates the same parts of the brain that have been associated with emotional
processing using other type of, In other type of,
In, in other type of studies. the result of many such studies.
Is summarized here in a plot by a, from a review of Stefan Koelsch.
And this plot shows all of these areas that have been associated with a, a, with
an emotional processing so again the Amygdala Bad emotions, nucleus accumbens,
good emotions and other parts of the other parts of the brain until
cingulates, until insula and so on and so forth.
what Kilsh does in this review is show that each of these areas.
Which are associated with emotinoal processing in general studies of emotions
is also associated with a, emotional processing in the context of music
listening. One interesting feature of all of these
of, of these studies of emotion in in emotion processing in music is the fact
that they tend to ignore auditory structures.
So you don't see here auditory cortex. You don't the a little thalamus.
And, it's not they're not activated, but they to be activated the same
interdependent of the emotional, emotionally quality or usually they seem
in most of these studies they seem to be unaffected by the emotional content of
the of the sounds. And in consequence they don't come out
when you compare eh, intense emotions and no emotion type of periods.
this raises the last set of questions that I would like shortly discuss here.
And this is the relationship between this, the early sensory processing that
we discussed at the beginning of this lecture.
And the high level of the, the non primarily sensory experiences like
emotions which are driven by them. So you have sounds in the ear and at some
points these sounds become music, or speech, or outside the auditory system,
you have patches of light and darkness that fall on your retina, and at some
point they become the picture of your grandmother, and evoke activity in these
presumed grandmother cells that have been postulated in the, in the visual system.
So how do sounds become music? How does the physical entity which is
represented in such high details at the early auditory system Become the
perceptual experience of music, which has both cognitive and emotional aspects.
How does music activate emotions? Why does a piece of music that evoke that
same average activity in auditory contexts causes a chill in another piece
of music with the same amount of activity in the auditory cortex.
And does not evoke, chills. And, again this generalizes.
It's not only the question about, music activating emotions.
It's also the question about taste and smell and texture like in this famous
passage at the beginning of post book [UNKNOWN].
Well the Magdalen evokes all of this switch set of memories in him.
For me. These are possibly some of the greatest
qeustions that we have to face, to understand reasonably well how sounds are
encoded in the brain and we don't understand this transition from sounds as
physical objects, with physical properties that are finely, very finely
processing or presented. into these perceptual objects, which are
music, speech and which are the things that presumably the things that
eventually evoke emotions. So in summary, I showed you what brain
does with things, okay mostly with respect to the auditory system, again,
because this is my own research subject. We started with say, sounds becoming
electrical activity. We went on to see how the auditory system
process sensory information in order to produce information that's relevant for
any important task for auditory localization and how this information
guides motion flow into action with another sensory system, the visual
system. Then, I discussed a high level
processing, which is, would fall more into the cognitive area of cognitive side
of uh, [UNKNOWN] processing, and ended up with discussing emotions that are
elicited by sounds. And the thing to remember.
Is that all of this is produced by network of neurons with synapses and
dendritic computations, axons and so on and so forth.
Even the motions that have been studied by Vladen Ensatory blood flow is related
to this type, the blood flow that they measure is related to this type.
Of processing that took cares where the brain.
And as usual, there's a lot of important fascinating details that I couldn't touch
at all. And I urge you to look for it further.
And with this, I say goodbye.
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