1. Emotion, Stress & Health
Identify socio-economic, psychological, cultural, and personal “stressors.”
How can stressors be a detriment to your life both now and into the future?
Identify positive strategies for coping w/ stressors.
Compare and Contrast the following three theories on emotion : James-Lange, Cannon-Baird, two-factor analysis.
Do we wear our emotions on our sleeves?

2. Mind and Body Can the body affect the mind? Example?
How about the mind affecting the body?
Two-way communication between mind and body

3. Psychosomatic Medicine
Psyche (mind)
Soma (body)
Butterflies in the stomach
Anxious before giving speech
Indigestion, nausea
Stress may contribute to getting an ulcer.

4. Relieve stress - Coping Mechanisms
Meditation
Listening to soothing music
Taking a quiet walk/ any exercise
Journaling
Go to conservatory, aquarium
Hang out w/ friends
Become organized
SLOW DOWN!! STOP TAKING ON MORE THAN YOU CAN HANDLE
Eliminate butterflies - stomach breathing exercises

5. Brain and Adrenal Cortex
Prolonged stress leads to the secretion of the adrenal hormone cortisol
Cortisol (stress hormone) elevates blood sugar and increases metabolism.
Body is then able to sustain prolonged activity
Also reduces inflammation

6. Affects on long-term health
Attitude towards illness can affect healing.
Thought, beliefs and emotions have major impact on physical health.
Link between mind and body is the immune system.

7. Biological Response to Emotion
Scream, Run away…infers fear.
Gut reaction:
Heart races, energy boost.
What coordinates body response?
Again, observable behavior is inferring an emotion, fear, to observers.
Facial expression, tremor, jumping, swinging arms, sweating
Absence seizures are operationally defined as a blank stare, no talking, no moving, then doing something without obvious reasons like walking down the hall and sitting in an unfamiliar room.
I knew someone who had these seizures and that’s a good description, although our teacher used to stop her from leaving. Then she would snap out of it and after assessing the environment, go back to her work. We only noticed a few times.
The point is, we need to be conscious to feel emotion.

9. James-Lange Theory
Autonomic arousal and skeletal actions come before emotional response
I experience fear because I run away
Cognitive awareness is separate
Brain can categorize events as pleasant or unpleasant in as little as 120 milliseconds
What we experience as an emotion is actually the label we give to our response.
I am afraid because I run away
I am angry because I attack
Here is what James and Lange thought about fear and other emotions’ effect on us.

10. James-Lange Key Assumptions: Body’s response comes before emotion
Each specific emotion produces a different body response
I think most people would not imagine themselves to be tranquil in this situation.

11. Common Sense (Cannon-Baird) vs. James-Lange
Common Sense (CB)?
Frightening Situation
Fear
Running Away and Increased Heart rate etc.
James-Lange Theory
Running Away and Increased Heart rate etc.
Give the bus example here:
You are at a cross walk in England. Instinctively you look to the left first as you step onto the road, forgetting that the cars drive on the left side of the road in England. You see out of the corner of your eye that there is a bus coming fast at you from the right. Decision time
In an instant, your body reacts and you fall backward faster than you thought you could to avoid the bus.
Do you think that you told your muscles to move in exactly the right emphasis, direction and order to get you out of the way or did your reflexes do that job and you only knew what had happened after you were lying on your back, safe on the sidewalk?

12. Two stage theory Schachter-Singer Theory
Physiological changes happen first.
Followed by cognitive labeling.
Heart rate goes up.
If in graveyard  fear.
If at a party  excitement.

13. Emotions are Multidimensional

14. Emotions and the Autonomic Nervous System
Sympathetic nervous system
arousing
Parasympathetic nervous system
Calming
Moderate arousal is ideal

15. Emotions and the Autonomic Nervous System

16. Internal conscious states that we infer in ourselves and others.
What is Emotion?
Internal conscious states that we infer in ourselves and others.
Emotions are private experiences.
We use operational definitions because we cannot actually see feelings.
We infer observable behavior associated with emotion.
We cannot know for sure if any other species has emotion
Operational definition is a constructed definition using parameters to describe what fits the definition and what doesn’t.
ex. Op. def. of joy might include: smiling, laughing, not a blank stare

17. Four components of Emotion
Significant life event

18. Feeling component Emotions are subjective feelings
Make us feel in a particular way.
Anger or joy.
Meaning and personal significance.
Vary in intensity and quality.
Rooted in mental processes (labeling).

19. Bodily Arousal Biological activation. Autonomic and hormonal systems.
Prepare and activate adaptive coping behavior during emotion.
Body prepared for action.
Alert posture, clenched fists.

20. Purposive component Give emotion its goal-directed force.
Motivation to take action.
Cope with emotion-causing circumstances.
Why people benefit from emotions.
Social and evolutionary advantage.

21. Social-Expressive component
Emotion’s communicative aspect.
Postures, gestures, vocalizations, facial expressions make our emotions public.
Verbal and nonverbal communication.
Helps us interpret the situation.
How person reacts to event.

22. Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Reactions
Every situation calls for its own special mixture of arousal by the sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (conservation of energy) N.S.
Flight or Flight: Sympathetic response prepares body to meet a crisis.
Rest or Digest: Parasympathetic calms body to aid in digestion.

23. Sympathetic and Parasympathetic flow of Autonomic Nervous System

24. Limbic System Brain mechanism in emotion
A group of structures in the interior of brain
Form a border around brain stem
Critical for emotion
This happens to me all the time. Someone asks me what someone said and I have trouble remembering the words but have a strong sense of how it made me feel.
There was an example in the book about a man with brain damage causing severe memory impairment. He knew what emotion to relate to a person but did not remember ever meeting them.

25. Limbic System

26. LeDoux and the snake Walking in woods. See what may be a snake.
Limbic system responds first: CAUTION! STOP!
Cortex catches up a second or two later.
Poisonous?

27. Emotion and Cognitive Paths
Visual thalamus
Visual cortex
Amygdala

28. Stress and Health
Stress is the nonspecific response of the body to any demand made upon it.
Failing grades
Scary movie
Even positive events in your life such as:
Graduation
New job
Stress activates the Autonomic Nervous System rapidly
Stress activates the Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) Axis more slowly.
Both systems have major effect on health and well-being.

29. Short term reaction to stress
Level of responsiveness
Sympathetic NS easily triggered.
Hostile heart syndrome.
Tense, impatient.
Road rage causes 4X more accidents than drunk driving.

30. Executive Monkey (Brady)
Pair of monkeys.
Both could get shock.
One monkey could press bar to avoid shock for him and his yoked control.
Monkey with active bar called “active” monkey.
Other monkey in pair called “passive”.
One member of pair likely to get ulcers.
Which one?

31. Brady’s experiment Active monkey is on the left.
Press lever to avoid shock.
Passive monkey is on the right.
Pressing the lever does not affect shock delivery
Active Passive

32. Brady’s mistake
Brady found executive (active) monkeys got more ulcers.
First monkey to learn task  active.
Attempts to replicate yield the opposite result: passive monkeys get ulcers.
Passive monkeys lack control over situation.
More stressful if you have no control over occurrence of stress.

33. Reducing the effects of stress
Stress is less harmful if
Have some control (even if just belief).
Predictable (“going to feel a little pinch”).
Know the duration.
Coping mechanism.
Some way to relieve stress.
Positive attitude.
Active participant in process.

34. Long term stress What if stress continues for months or years?
Stressful occupations: air traffic controllers
Whether stress is real or imagined doesn’t matter to the brain and body.
Respond in the same way.
Brain activates the adrenal cortex.

35. Response to injury Sprains ankle.
Inflammation causes swelling and pain.
Reduce ability to move.
Life threatening injury.
Cortisol reduces inflammation.
Mobilizes energy.
Survival value.

36. General Adaptation Syndrome
Phases of GAS
1: Alarm reaction:
Body’s first response.
2: Resistance:
Body adapts to stressor.
3: Exhaustion:
Body breaks down.
Changes in immune system
Hans Selye
Father of Stress

37. GAS timeline Alarm Resistance Exhaustion Immune function and energy

38. The Immune System
Cells that protect the body against intruders such as viruses and bacteria.
Like a police force
Too weak and criminals (viruses etc.) run wild
Too strong and it attacks law-abiding citizens:
The body’s own cells (Autoimmune disease)
Ex. Rheumatoid arthritis

39. Immune system Leukocytes (White blood cells) Most important elements
Patrol the blood & fluids
Antigens: Intruders have different surface proteins (nonself) than our own (self)
WBCs attack antigens
Macrophages and B Cells are specific defenses
T cells: cytotoxic and helper
Cytotoxic: direct attack
Helper: stimulates Ts & B’s to multiply rapidly

40. Immune Response to Bacteria

41. Effects of Stress on Immune System
Psychoneuroimmunology:
The study of the relationship between the nervous system and immune systems.
All experiences, especially stressful ones, can alter the immune system.
The Immune system in turn influences the central nervous system.

42. Effects of Stress
Continued, long term anxiety, anger or stress is harmful.
A body focused on the cycle of increased cortisol & increased metabolism, it is not producing new proteins for the immune system and other systems.
High cortisol levels damage hippocampus
Learning and memory suffer as a result
Three mile island is a location in New Jersey that is home to a nuclear power plant that had a very near miss catasrophy.
The people living nearby were tested after the fact to see the effects on their immune system as a result of the added stress of living so close to a potential meltdown site. The results helped us to know more about the effects of stress on the body.

43. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Traumatic experience leads to:
Months or even years of flashbacks and nightmares
Exaggerated arousal response to noises etc.
Avoidance of reminders of the event
Combat veterans, rape victims, 9/11
Most PTSD victims have a smaller than average hippocampus
Did PTSD cause the hippocampus to shrink or did the smaller than average hippocampus cause this person to be more vulnerable to PTSD?
We can’t know unless we had an MRI of the PTSD sufferer’s brain BEFORE they experienced the trauma.

44. Emotions, Stress and Health
They are all intricately related.