amygdalae is the part of the brain that plays an important role in emotional conditioning.
amygdalae is the part of the brain that plays an important role in emotional conditioning.
what part of the brain plays an important role in emotional conditioning?
amygdalae
emotional memories are thought to be stored in synapses throughout the brain. fear memories, for example, are considered to be stored in the neuronal connections from the lateral nuclei to the central nucleus of the amygdalae and the bed nuclei of the stria terminalis (part of the extended amygdala). of course, these connections are not the sole site of fear memories given that the nuclei of the amygdala receive and send information to other brain regions that are important for memory such as the hippocampus. some sensory neurons project their axon terminals to the central nucleus. the central nuclei are involved in the genesis of many fear responses such as defensive behavior (freezing or escape responses), autonomic nervous system responses (changes in blood pressure and heart rate/tachycardia), neuroendocrine responses (stress-hormone release), etc. damage to the amygdalae impairs both the acquisition and expression of pavlovian fear conditioning, a form of classical conditioning of emotional responses.
amygdala
eysenck's two original personality factors, neuroticism and extraversion, were derived from the same lexical paradigm used by other researchers (e.g., gordon allport, raymond cattell) to delineate the structure of personality. eysenck’s extraversion-arousal hypothesis states that under low stimulation conditions, introverts (defined as low in extraversion) will be more highly aroused than extraverts; however, under high stimulation, introverts may become over-aroused, which will feedback within the aras and result in "decreases" in arousal. alternatively, extraverts tend to show greater increases in arousal under high stimulation. eysenck also studied the relationship between neuroticism and activation of the limbic system using classical emotional conditioning models. his theory focused more on anxiety as a disorder than a personality trait. eysenck’s theory predicts that introverts are more likely to develop anxiety disorders because they show higher neuroticism and stronger emotional conditioning responses under high arousal. his theory was criticized because introverts often show the opposite pattern, weaker classical conditioning under high arousal, and some supporting data confounded personality traits with time of day.
reinforcement sensitivity theory