# Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience/Motivation and Emotion


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## Introduction

Happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, disgust and fear. All these words
describe some kind of abstract inner states in humans, in some cases
difficult to control. We usually call them feelings or emotions. But
what is the reason that we are able to \"feel\"? Where do emotions come
from and how are they caused? And are emotions and feelings the same
thing? Or are we supposed to differentiate?

These are all questions that cognitive psychology deals with in emotion
research. Emotion research in the cognitive science is not much older
than twenty years. The reason for this lies perhaps in the fact that
much of the cognitive psychology tradition was based on
computer-inspired information-processing models of cognition.

This chapter gives an overview about the topic for a better
understanding of motivation and emotions. It provides information about
theories concerning the cause of motivation and emotions in the human
brain, their processes, their role in the human body and the connection
between the two topics. We will try to show the actual state of
research, some examples of psychologist experiments, and different
points of view in the issue of emotions. In the end we will briefly
outline some disorders to emphasize the importance of emotions for the
social interaction.

## Motivation

### About Drives and Motives

Motivation is an extended notion,
which refers to the starting, controlling and upholding of corporal and
mental activities. It is declared by inner processes and variables which
are used to explain behavioral changes. Motivations are commonly
separated into two types:

1.Drives: describe acts of motivation like thirst or hunger that have
primarily biological purposes.

2.Motives: are driven by primarily social and psychological mechanisms.

Motivation is an interceding variable, which means that it is a variable
that is not directly observable. Therefore, in order to study
motivation, one must approach it through variables which are measurable
and observable:

\- Observable terms of variation (independent variables [^1])

\- Indicators of behavior (dependent variables[^2]) e.g.: rate of
learning, level of activity, \...

There are two major methodologies used to manipulate drives and motives
in experiments:

*Stimulation*: Initiating motives by aversive attractions like shocks,
loud noise, heat or coldness. On the other side attractions can activate
drives which lead to positive affective states, e.g. sexual drives.

*Deprivation*: means that you prohibit the access to elementary aspects
of biological or psychological health, like nutrition or social
contacts. As a result it leads it to motives or drives which are not
common for this species under normal conditions.

A theory of motivations was conceived by Abraham Maslow in 1970
(Maslow\'s hierarchy of
needs). He considered
two kinds of motivation:

1\. *Defected motivation*: brings humans to reconsider their psychical
and physical balance.

2\. *Adolescence motivation*: gets people to pass old events and states
of their personal development.

Maslow argues that everyone has a hierarchy of needs(see picture).

Regarding to this, our innate needs could be ordered in a hierarchy,
starting at the "basic" ones and heading towards higher developed
aspects of humanity. The hypothesis is that the human is ruled by lower
needs as long as they are not satisfied. If they are satisfied in an
adequate manner, the human then deals with higher needs. (compare to
chapter attention)

!Hierarchy of needs, Maslow
(1970)")

Nevertheless, all throughout history you can find examples of people who
willingly practiced deprivation through isolation, celibacy, or by
hunger strike. These people may be the exceptions to this hypothesis,
but they may also have some other, more pressing motives or drives which
induce them to behave in this way.

It seems that individuals are able to resist certain motives via
personal cognitive states. The ability of cognitive reasoning and
willing is a typical feature of being human and can be the reason for
many psychological diseases which indicates that humans are not always
capable to handle all rising mental states. Humans are able to
manipulate their motives without knowing the real emotional and
psychological causes. This introduces the problem that the entity of
consciousness, unconsciousness and
what ever else could be taken into account is essentially unknown.
Neuroscience cannot yet provide a concrete explanation for the
neurological substructures of motives, but there has been considerable
progress in understanding the neurological procedures of drives.

### The Neurological Regulation of Drives

#### The Role of the Hypothalamus

The purpose of drives is to correct disturbances of homeostasis which is
controlled by the hypothalamus. Deviations from the optimal range of a
regulated parameter like temperature are detected by neurons
concentrated in the periventricular zone of the hypothalamus. These
neurons then produce an integrated response to bring the parameter back
to its optimal value. This response generally consists of

1\. *Humoral response*

2\. *Visceromotor response*

3\. *Somatic motor response*

When you are dehydrated, freezing, or exhausted, the appropriate humoral
and visceromotor responses are activated automatically,[^3] e.g.: body
fat reserves are mobilized, urine production is inhibited, you shiver,
blood is shunted away from the body surface, ... But it is much faster
and more effective to correct these disturbances by eating, drinking
water or actively seeking or generating warmth by moving. These are
examples of drives generated by the somatic motor system, and they are
incited to emerge by the activity of the lateral hypothalamus.

For illustration we will make a brief overview on the neural basis of
the regulation of feeding behavior, which is divided into the long-term
and the short-term regulation of feeding behavior.

The long-term regulation of feeding behavior prevents energy shortfalls
and concerns the regulation of body fat and feeding. In the 1940s the
"dual center" model was popular, which divided the hypothalamus in a
"hunger center" (lateral hypothalamus) and a "satiety center"
(ventromedial hypothalamus). This theory developed from the facts that
bilateral lesions of the lateral hypothalamus causes anorexia, a
severely diminished appetite for food (lateral hypothalamic syndrome)
and on the other side bilateral lesions of the ventromedial hypothalamus
causes overeating and obesity (ventromedial hypothalamic syndrome).
Anyway, it has been proved that this "dual model" is overly simplistic.
The reason why hypothalamic lesions affect body fat and feeding behavior
has in fact much to do with leptin signaling. Adipocytes (fat cells)
release the hormone leptin, which regulates body mass by acting directly
on neurons of the arcuate nucleus[^4] of the hypothalamus that decreases
appetite and increase energy expenditure. A fall in leptin levels
stimulates another type of arcuate nucleus neurons[^5] and neurons in
the lateral hypothalamus,[^6] which activate the parasympathetic
division of the ANS, and stimulate feeding behavior. The short-term
regulation of feeding behavior deals with appetite and satiety. Until
1999 scientists believed that hunger was merely the absence of satiety.
This changed with the discovery of a peptide called ghrelin, which is
highly concentrated in the stomach and is released into the bloodstream
when the stomach is empty. In the arcuate nucleus it activates
neurons,[^7] that strongly stimulate appetite and food consumption. The
meal finally ends by the concerted actions of several satiety signals,
like gastric distension and the release of insulin.[^8] But it seems
that animals not only eat because they want food to satisfy their
hunger. They also eat because they like food in a merely hedonistic
sense. Research on humans and animals suggests that "liking" and
"wanting" are mediated by separate circuits in the brain.

#### The Role of Dopamine in Motivation

In the early 1950s, Peter Milner and James Olds conducted an experiment
in which a rat had an electrode implanted in its brain, so the brain
could be locally stimulated at any time. The rat was seated in a box,
which contained a lever for food and water and a lever that would
deliver a brief stimulus to the brain when stepped on. At the beginning
the rat wandered about the box and stepped on the levers by accident,
but before long it was pressing the lever for the brief stimulus
repeatedly. This behavior is called electrical self-stimulation.
Sometimes the rats would become so involved in pressing the lever that
they would forget about food and water, stopping only after collapsing
from exhaustion. Electrical self-stimulation apparently provided a
reward that reinforced the habit to press the lever. Researches were
able to identify the most effective sites for self-stimulation in the
different regions of the brain: the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system.
Drugs that block dopamine receptors reduced the self-stimulation
behavior of the rat. In the same way this drugs greatly reduced the
pressing of a lever for receiving of food even if the rat was hungry.
These experiments suggested a mechanism by which natural rewards (food,
water, sex) reinforce particular behavior. Dopamine plays an important
role in addiction of drugs like heroin, nicotine and cocaine. Thus these
drugs either stimulate dopamine release (heroin, nicotine) or enhance
dopamine actions (cocaine) in the nucleus accumbens. Chronic stimulation
of this pathway causes a down-regulated of the dopamine "reward" system.
This adaption leads to the phenomenon of drug tolerance. Indeed, drug
discontinuation in addicted animals is accompanied by a marked decrease
in dopamine release and function in the nucleus accumbens, leading to
the symptom of craving for the discontinued drug. The exact role of
dopamine in motivating behavior continues to be debated. However, much
evidence suggests that animals are motivated to perform behaviors that
stimulate dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens and related
structures

## Emotions

### Basics

In contrast to previous research, modern brain based neuroscience has
taken a more serviceable approach to the field of
Emotions, because emotions definitely
are brain related processes which deserve scientific study, whatever
their purpose may be.

One interpretation regards emotions as „action schemes", which
especially lead to a certain behaviour which is essential for survival.
It is important to distinguish between conscious aspects of emotion like
subjective - often bodily - feelings, as well as unconscious aspects
like the detection of a threat. This will be discussed later on in
conjunction with awareness of emotion. It is also important to
differentiate between a mood and an emotion. A mood refers to a
situation where an emotion occurs frequently or continuously. As an
example: Fear is an emotion, anxiety is a mood.

The first question which arises is how to categorise emotions. They
could be treated as a single entity, but perhaps it could even make more
sense to distinguish between them, which leads to the question if some
emotions like happiness or anger are more basic than other types like
jealousy or love and if emotions are dependent on culture and/or
language.

One of the most influential ethnographic studies by Eckman and Friesen,
which is based on the comparison of facial expressions of emotions in
different cultures, concluded that there are six basic types of emotions
expressed in faces - namely sadness, happiness, disgust, surprise, anger
and fear, independent from culture and language. An alternative approach
is to differentiate between emotions not by categorising but rather by
measuring the intensity of an emotion by imposing different dimensions,
e.g. their valence and their arousal. If this theory would be true then
one might expect to find different brain regions which selectivey
process positive or negative emotions. !Six basic types of emotions
expressed in
faces{width="500"}

Complex emotions like jealousy, love and pride are different from basic
emotions as they comprehend awareness of oneself in relation to other
people and one\'s attitude towards other people. Hence they come along
with a more complex attributional process which is required to
appreciate thoughts and beliefs of other people. Complex emotions are
more likely be dependent on cultural influences than basic types of
emotions. If you think of Knut who is feeling embarrassment, you have to
consider what kind of action he committed in which situation and how
this action raised the disapproval of other people.

### Awareness and Emotion

Awareness is closely connected with changes in the environment or in the
psycho-physiological state. Why recognise changes rather than stable
states? An answer could be that changes are an important indicator of
our situation. They show that our situation is unstable. Paying
attention or focusing on that might increase the chance to survive. A
change bears more information than repetitive events. This appears more
exciting. Repetition reduces excitement. If we think that we got the
most important information from a situation or an event,we become
unaware of such an event or certain facts.

Current research in this field suggest that changes are needed to emerge
emotions,so we can say that it is strong attention dependent. The event
has to draw our attention. No recognition, no emotions. But do we have
always an emotional evaluation, when we are aware of certain events? How
has the change to be relevant for our recognition? Emotional changes are
highly personal significant, saying that it needs a relation to our
personal self.

Significance presupposes order and relations. Relations are to meaning
as colours are to vision: a necessary condition, but not its whole
content. One determines the significance and the scope of a change by
f.e. event´s impact (event´s strength), reality, relevance and factors
related to the background circumstances of the subject. We feel no
emotion in response to change which we perceive as unimportant or
unrelated. Roughly one can say that emotions express our attitude toward
unstable significant objects which are somehow related to us.

This is also always connected with the fact that we have greater
response to novel experience. Something that is unexpected or unseen
yet. When children get new toys, they are very excited at first, but
after a while one can perceive, or simply remember their own childhood,
that they show less interest in that toy. That shows, that emotional
response declines during time. This aspect is called the process of
adaptation. The threshold of awareness keeps rising if stimulus level is
constant. Hence, awareness decreases. The organism withdraws its
consciousness from more and more events. The person has the pip, it has
enough. The opposite effect is also possible. It is known as the process
of facilitation. In this case the threshold of awareness diminishes.

Consciousness is focusing on increasing number of events. This happens
if new stimuli are encountered. The process of adaptation might prevent
us from endlessly repetitive actions. A human would not be able to learn
something new or be caught in an infinite loop. The emotional
environment contains not only what is, and what will be, experienced but
also all that could be, or that one desires to be, experienced; for the
emotional system, all such possibilities are posited as simultaneously
there and are compared with each other.

Whereas intellectual thinking expresses a detached and objective manner
of comparison, the emotional comparison is done from a personal and
interested perspective; intellectual thinking may be characterised as an
attempt to overcome the personal emotional perspective. It is quite
difficult to give an external description of something that is related
to an intrinsic, personal perspective. But it is possible. In the
following the most popular theories will be shown, and an rough overview
about the neural substrates of emotions.

### The Neural Correlate of Emotion

#### Papez Circuit

James W. Papez was the investigator of the Papez Circuit theory (1937).
He was the first who tried to explain emotions in a neurofuncional way.
Papez discovered the circuit after injecting the baring-virus into a
cat\'s hippocampus andobserved its effects on the brain. The Papez
circuit is chiefly involved in the cortical control of emotion. The
corpus mamillare (part of the hypothalamus) plays a central role. The
Papez Circuit involves several regions in the brain with the following
course:

● The hippocampus projects to fornix and via this to corpus mamillare

● from here neurons project via the fasciculus mamillothalamicus to
nucleus anterior of the thalamus and then to the gyrus cinguli

● due to the connection of gyrus cinguli and hippocampus the circuit is
closed.

1949 Paul MacLean extended this theory by hypothezing that regions like
the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex work together with the circuit
and form an emotional brain. However, the theory of the Papez circuit
could no longer be held because, for one, some regions of the circuit
can no longer be related to functions to which they were ascribed
primarily. And secondly, current state of research concludes that each
basic emotion has its own circuit. Furthermore, the assumption that the
limbic system is solely responsible for these functions is out-dated.
Other cortical and non-cortical structures of the brain have an enormous
bearing on the limbic system. So the emergence of emotion is always an
interaction of many parts of the brain.

#### Amygdala and Fear

The Amygdala (lat. Almond), latinic-anatomic Corpus amygdaloideum, is
located in the left and right temporal lobe. It belongs to the limbic
system and is essentially involved in the emergence of fear. In
addition, the amygdala plays a decisive role in the emotional evaluation
and recognition of situations as well as in the analysis of potential
threat. It handles external stimuli and induces vegetative reactions.
These may help prepare the body for fight and flight by increasing heart
and breathing-rate. The small mass of grey matter is also responsible
for learning on the basis of reward or punishment. If the two parts of
the amygdala are destroyed the person loses their sensation of fear and
anger. Experiments with patients whose amygdala is damaged show the
following: The participants were impaired to a lesser degree with
recognizing facial anger and disgust. They could not match pictures of
the same person when the expressions were different. Beyond Winston,
O´Doherty and Dolan report that the amygdala activation was independent
of whether or not subjects engaged in incidental viewing or explicit
emotion judgements. However, other regions (including the ventromedial
frontal lobes) were activated only when making explicit judgements about
the emotion. This was interpreted as reinstatement of the „feeling" of
the emotion. Further studies show that there is a slow route to the
amygdala via the primary visual cortex and a fast subcortical route from
the thalamus to the amygdala. The amygdala is activated by unconscious
fearful expressions in healthy participants and also „blindsight"
patients with damage to primary visual cortex. The fast route is
imprecise and induces fast unconscious reactions towards a threat before
you consciously notice and may properly react via the slow route. This
was shown by experiments with persons who have a snake phobia
(ophidiophobics) or a spider phobia (arachnophobics). When they get to
see a snake, the former showed a bodily reaction, before they reported
seeing the snake. A similar reaction was not observable in the case of a
spiderphobia. By experiments with spiders the results were the other way
round.

#### Recognition of Other Emotional Categories

Another basic emotional category which is largely independent of other
emotions is disgust. It literally means „bad taste" and is evolutionary
related to contamination through ingestion. Patients with the
Huntington\'s disease have problems with recognizing disgust. The
insula, a small region of cortex buried beneath the temporal lobes,
plays an important role for facial expressions of disgust. Furthermore,
the half of the patients with a damaged amygdala have problems with
facial expressions of sadness. The damage of the ventral regions of the
basal ganglia causes the deficit in the selective perception of anger
and this brain area could be responsible for the perception of
aggression. Happiness cannot be selectively impaired because it consist
of a more distributed network.

### Functional Theories

In order to explain human emotions, that means to discover how they
arise and investigate how they are represented in the brain, researchers
worked out several theories. In the following the most important views
will be discussed

#### James -- Lange Theory

The James -- Lange theory of emotion states that the self -- perception
of bodily changes produces emotional experience. For example you are
happy because you are laughing or you feel sad because you are crying.
Alternatively, when a person sees a spider he or she might experience
fear. One problem according this theory is that it is not clear what
kind of processing leads to the changes in the bodily state and wether
this process can be seen as a part of the emotion itself. However,
people paralyzed from the neck down, who have little awareness of
sensory input are still able to experience emotions. Also, research by
Schacter and Singer has shown, that changes in bodily state are not
enough to produce emotions. Because of that, an extension of this theory
was necessary.

#### Two Factor Theory

The two factor theory views emotion as an compound of the two factors:
physiological arousal and cognition. Schacter and Singer (1962) did
well-known studies in this field of research. They injected participants
with adrenaline (called epinephrine in the USA). This is a drug that
causes a number of effects like increased blood flow to the muscles and
increased heart rate. The result was that the existence of the drug in
the body did not lead to experiences of emotion. Just with the presence
of an cognitive setting, like an angry man in the room, participants did
self -- report an emotion. Contrary to the James -- Lange theory this
study suggests that bodily changes can only support conscious emotional
experiences but do not create emotions. Therefore, the interpretation of
a certain emotion depends on the physiological state in correlation to
the subjects circumstances.

#### Somatic Marker Hypothesis

This current theory of emotions (from A. Damasio) emphasizes the role of
bodily states and implies that "somatic marker" signals have influence
on behaviour, like particularly reasoning and decision--making. Somatic
markers are the connections between previous situations, which are
stored in the cortex, and the bodily feeling of such situations (e.g.
stored in the amygdala). From this it follows, that the somatic markers
are very useful during the decision process, because they can give you
immediate response on the grounds of previous acquired knowledge,
whether the one or the other option "feels" better. People who are
cheating and murdering without feeling anything miss somatic markers
which would prevent them from doing this.

In order to investigate this hypothesis a gambling task was necessary.
There have been four decks of cards (A, B, C, D) on the table and the
participants had to take always one in turn. On the other side of the
card was either a monetary penalty or gain. The players have been told
that they must play so that they win the most. Playing from decks A and
B leads to a loss of money whereas choosing decks C and D leads to gain.
Persons without a brain lesion learned to avoid deck A and B but players
with such damage did not.

### Reading Minds

Empathy is the ability to appreciate others' emotions and their point of
view. Simulation theory states that the same neural and cognitive
resources are used by perceiving the emotional expressions of others and
by producing actions and this expressions in oneself. If you are
watching a movie where one person touches another, the same neural
mechanism (in the somatosensory cortex) is activated as if you were
physically touched. Further studies investigated empathy for pain. That
means, if you see someone experiencing pain, two regions in your brain
are overlapping. The first region is responsible for expecting another
person's pain, and the second region is responsible for experiencing
this pain oneself.

### Mood and Memory

While we store a memory, we not only record all sensory data, we also
store our mood and emotional state. Our current mood thus will affect
the memories that are most effortlessly available to us, such that when
we are in a good mood we recollect good memories (and vice versa). While
the nature of memory is associative this also means that we tend to
store happy memories in a linked set. There are two different ways we
remember past events:

#### Mood-congruence

Memory occurs where current mood helps recall of mood-congruent
material, e.g. characters in stories that feel like the reader feels
while reading, regardless of our mood at the time the material was
stored. Thus when we are happy, we are more likely to remember happy
events. Also remembering all of the negative events of our past when
depressed is an example of mood congruence. That means that you can
rather remember a funeral where you were happy in a happy mood while you
remember a party where you were sad in a sad mood, although a funeral is
sad and a party is happy.

#### Mood-dependency

Memory occurs where the congruence of current mood with the mood at the
time of memory storage helps recall of that memory. When we are happy,
we are more likely to remember other times when we were happy. So, if
you want to remember something, get into the mood you were in when you
experienced it. You can easily try this yourself. You just have to bring
into a certain mood by listening to the saddest/happiest music you know.
Now you learn a list of words. Then you try to recall the list in the
other/the same mood. You will see that you remember the list better when
you are in the same mood as you were while learning it.

## Disorders

Without balanced emotions, one\'s ability to interact in a social
network will be affected in some manner (e.g. reading minds). In this
part of the chapter some grave disorders will be presented- these are:
depression,
austism and antisocial behaviour
disorders as psychopathy and
sociopathy. It is important to
mention that those disorders will mainly be considered in regard to
their impact on social competence. To get a full account of the
characteristics of each of the disorders, we recommend reading the
particular articles provided by Wikipedia.

### Autism

Autism is thought to be an innate condition with individual forms
distributed on a broad spectrum. This means that symptoms can range from
minor behavioral problems to major mental deficits, but there is always
some impairment of social competence. The American Psychiatric
Association characterizes autism as \"the presence of markedly abnormal
or impaired development in social interaction and communication and a
markedly restricted repertoire of activities and interests\" (1994,
diagnostic and statistical manual; DSM-IV). The deficits in social
competence are sometimes divided into the so-called \"triad of
impairments\", including:

(1)Social interaction This includes difficulties with social
relationships, for example appearing distanced and indifferent to other
people.

(2)Social communication Autists have problems with verbal and non-verbal
communication, for example, they do not fully understand the meaning of
common gestures, facial expressions or the voice tones. They often show
reduced or even no eye-contact as well, avoid body contact like shaking
hands and have difficulties to understand metaphores and \"to read
between the lines\".

(3)Social imagination Autists lack social imagination manifesting in
difficulties in the development of interpersonal play and imagination,
for example having a limited range of imaginative activities, possibly
copied and pursued rigidly and repetitively.

All forms of autism can already be recognized during childhood and
therefore disturb the proper socialization of the afflicted child. Often
autistic children are less interested in playing with other children but
for example love to arrange their toys with utmost care. Unable to
interpret emotional expressions and social rules autists are prone to
show inappropriate behaviour towards the people surrounding them.
Autists may not obviously be impaired therefore other people
misunderstand their actions as provocation.

Still there are other features of autism- autists often show stereotyped
behaviour and feel quite uncomfortable when things change in the
routines and environment they are used to. Very rarely, a person with
autism may have a remarkable talent, such as memorizing a whole city
panorama including, for example, the exact number of windows in each of
the buildings.

There are several theories trying to explain autism or features of
autism. In an experiment conducted by Baron-Cohen and colleagues (1995)
cartoons were presented to normal and autistic children showing a smiley
in the centre of each picture and four different sweets in each corner
(see picture below). The smiley, named Charlie, was gazing at one of the
sweets. The children were asked question as: \"Which chocolate does
Charlie want?\"

!Autistic children were able to detect where the smiley was looking but
unable to infer its \'desires\'. (adapted graphic from Ward, J. (2006).
*The Students Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience*. Hove: Psychology Press.
page
316). The Students Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience. Hove: Psychology Press. page 316)")

Normal children could easily infer Charlie\'s desires from Charlie\'s
gaze direction whereas autistic children would not guess the answer.

Additional evidence from other experiments suggest that autists are
unable to use eye gaze information to interpret people\'s desires and
predict their behaviour which would be crucial for social interaction.
Another proposal to explain autistic characteristics suggests that
autists lack representations of other people\'s mental states
(mindblindness - proposed by Baron-Cohen, 1995b).

### Depression

Depression is a disorder that leads to an emotional disfunction
characterized by a state of intensive sadness, melancholia and despair.
The disorder affects social and everyday life. There are many different
forms of depression that differ in strength and duration. People
affected by depression suffer from anxiety, distorted thinking, dramatic
mood changes and many other symptoms. They feel sad, and everything
seems to be bleak. This leads to an extremely negative view of
themselves and their current and future situation. These factors can
lead to a loss of a normal social life that might affect the depressed
person even further. Suffering from depression and losing your social
network can thereby lead to a vicious circle.

### Psychopathy and Sociopathy

Psychopathy and sociopathy are nowadays subsumed under the notion of
antisocial behaviour disorders but experts are still quite discordant
whether both are really separated disturbances or rather forms of other
personal disorders e.g. autism. Psychopaths and sociopaths often get
into conflict with their social environment because they repeatedly
violate social and moral rules. Acquired sociopathy manifests in the
inability to form lasting relationships, irresponsible behaviour as well
as getting angry quite fast and exceptional strong egocentric thinking.
While acquired sociopathy might be characterised by impulsive antisocial
behaviour often having no personal advantage, developmental psychopathy
manifests in goal directed and self-initiated aggression. Acquired
sociopathy is caused by brain injury especially found in the
orbitofrontal lobe (frontal lobe) and is thought to be a failure to use
emotional cues and the loss of social knowledge. Therefore sociopaths
are unable to control and plan their behaviour in a socially adequate
manner. In contrast to sociopaths psychopaths are not getting angry
because of minor reasons but they act aggressively without
understandable reasons at all which might be due to their inability to
understand and distinguish between moral rules (concerning the welfare
of others) and conventions (consensus rules of society). Furthermore it
even happens that they feel no guilt or empathy for their victims.
Psychopathy is probably caused by a failure to process distress cues of
others, meaning that they are unable to understand sad and fearful
expressions and consequently suppress their aggression (Blair 1995). It
is important to mention that they are nevertheless able to detect
stimuli being threatening for themselves.

## Summary

We hope that this chapter gave you an overview and answered the question
we posed at the beginning. As one can see this young field of cognitive
is wide and not yet completely researched. Many different theories were
proposed to explain emotions and motivation like the James-Lange Theory
which claims that bodily changes lead to emotional experiences. This
theory led to the Two-Factor-Theory which in contrast says that bodily
changes only support emotional experiences. Whereas the newest theory
(Somatic marker) states that somatic markers support decision making.
While analyzing emotions, one has to distinguish between conscious
emotions, like a feeling, and unconscious aspects, like the detection of
threat. Presently, researchers distinguish six basic emotions that are
independent from cultural aspects. In comparison to this basic emotions
other emotions also comprehend social awareness. So, emotions are not
only important for our survival but for our social live, too. Reading
faces helps us to communicate and interpret behaviour of other people.
Many disorders impair this ability leaving the afflicted person with an
inability to integrate himself into the social community. Another
important part in understanding emotions is awareness; we only pay
attention on new things in order to avoid getting unimportant
information. Moods also affect our memory - we can remember things
better if we are in the same mood as in the situation before and if the
things we want to remember are connoted in the same way as our current
mood. We also outlined the topic of motivation which is crucial to
initiate and uphold our mental and corporal activities. Motivation
consists of two parts: drives (biological needs) and motives (primarily
social and psychological mechanisms). One important theory is the Maslow
Hierarchy of Needs; it states that higher motivations are only aspired
if lower needs are satisfied. As this chapter only dealt with mood and
memory, the next chapter deals with memory and language.

## References

### Books

-   Zimbardo, Philip G. (1995, 12th edition). Psychology and Life. Inc.
    Scott, Foresman and Company, Glenview, Illinois.
    
-   Banich,Marie T. (2004). Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology.
    Housthon Mifflin Company. 
-   Robert A. Wilson and Frank C. Keil. (2001). The MIT Encyclopedia of
    Cognitive Sciences (MITECS). Bradford Book.
    
-   Antonio R. Damasio. (1994) reprinted (2005). Descartes\' Error:
    Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. Penguin Books.
    
-   Antonio R. Damasio. (1999). The Feeling of what Happens. Body and
    Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. Harcourt Brace & Company.
    
-   Aaron Ben-Ze\'ev (Oct 2001). The Subtlety of Emotions.(MIT CogNet).
    
-   Ward, J. (2006). The Students Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience. Hove:
    Psychology Press. 

### Journals

-   The emotional brain. Tim Dalgleish.
-   \(1\) Leonard, C.M., Rolls, E.T., Wilson, F.A.W. & Baylis, C.G.
    Neurons in the amygdala of the monkey with responses selective for
    faces.

Behav. Brain Res. 15, 159-176 (1985)

-   (2)Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Damasio, H. & Damasio, A. Impaired
    recognition of emotion in facial expressions following bilateral
    damage of the human amygdala.

Nature 372, 669-672 (1994)

-   (3)Young, A. W. et al. Face processing impairments after
    amygdalotomy.

Brain 118, 15-24 (1995)

-   (4)Calder, A. J. et al. Facial emotion recognition after bilateral
    amygdala damage: Differentially severe impairment of fear.

Cognit. Neuropsychol. 13, 699-745 (1996)

-   (5)Scott, S. K. et al. Impaired auditory recognition of fear and
    anger following bilateral amygdala lesions.

Nature 385, 254-257 (1997)

-   (6)Cahill, L., Babinsky, R., Markowitsch, H. J. & McGaugh, J. L. The
    amygdala and emotional memory.

Nature 377, 295-296 (1995)

-   (7)Wood, Jacqueline N. and Grafman, Jordan (02/2003). Human
    Prefrontal Cotex.

Nature Reviews/ Neuroscience

-   (8)Brothers, L. , Ring, B. & Kling, A. Response of neurons in the
    macaque amygdala to complex social stimuli.

Behav. Brain Res. 41, 199-213 (1990)

-   (9)Bear, M.F., Connors, B.W., Paradiso, M.A. (2006, 3rd edition).
    Neuroscience. Exploring the Brain. Lippincott Wiliams & Wilkins.
    

### Links

-   Dana Foundation and the Dana Alliance: The Site for Brain
    News
-   Brain Facts: PDF


[^1]: Independent variables are the circumstance of major interest in an
    experiment. The Participant does only react on them, but cannot
    actively change them. They are independent of his behaviour.

[^2]: The measured behaviour is called the dependent variable.

[^3]: At the humoral response hypothalamic neurons stimulate or inhibit
    the release of pituitary hormones into the bloodstream and at the
    visceromotor response neurons in the hypothalamus adjust the balance
    of sympathetic and parasympathetic outputs of the autonomic nervous
    system (ANS).

[^4]: αMSH neurons and CART neurons of the arcuate nucleus.
    αMSH(alpha-malanocyte-stimulating hormone) and CART(cocaine- and
    amphetamine-regulated transcript) are anoretic peptides, which
    activate the pituitary hormones TSH(thyroid-stimulating hormone) and
    ACTH(adrenocorticotropic hormone), that have the effect of raising
    the metabolic rate of cells throughout the body.

[^5]: NPY neurons and AgRP neurons. NPY(neuropeptide Y) and
    AgRP(agouti-related peptide) are orexigenic peptides, which inhibit
    the secretion of TSH and ACTH.

[^6]: MCH(melanin-concentrating hormone) neurons, which have extremely
    widespread connections in the brain, including direct monosynaptic
    innervation of most of the cerebral cortex, that is involved in
    organizing and initiating goal-directed behaviors, such as raiding
    the refrigerator.

[^7]: The NPY- and AgRP neurons.

[^8]: The pancreatic hormone insulin, released by β cells of the
    pancreas, acts directly on the arcuate and ventromedial nuclei of
    the hypothalamus. It appears that it operates in much the same way
    as leptin to regulate feeding behavior, with the difference that its
    primary stimulus for realisng is increased blood glucose level.
