¶ … brain regions are activated by emotional stimuli?
There has been a great deal of interest within the medical and scientific community in studying the response of various regions of the brain to emotional stimuli. Much research has focused on the role of the amygdala in response to emotional stimuli, and the effects of such stimuli on learning and memory retention. The amygdala "is a structure in the medial temporal lobe that is known to participate in emotional and motivational functions in animals" (CGN, 2004) however its role in human emotional response has not yet been fully uncovered. It has been directly implicated however, in emotional stimulus related examinations. The amygdale is not the only brain region activated by emotional stimuli. Recent research has suggested that many areas of the brain are activated and affected by emotional stimuli, not just the amygdala. In fact, depending on the type of emotional stimulus presented, most of the brain regions may be activated.
This paper will examine the question of which areas of the brain are engaged by emotional stimuli. The preliminary hypothesis to be supported is that every region of the brain is activated by emotional stimuli; and that secondarily, each region of the brain is activated in different manners by different stimuli. Some stimuli will have a greater affect on certain areas of the brain than others. For example, emotional responses to recognizable stimuli may elicit a stronger response than responses to foreign stimuli. The paper proposes to prove that notion that every region of the brain does not act similarly in response to various emotional stimuli, but most regions will react in some manner. The amygdala for example, will react more aggressively to certain forms of emotional stimuli than others.
The literature examined below supports the notion that various regions of the brain are affected and activated in different manners with regard to the same emotional stimuli. Each study takes a different approach to examining various forms of emotional and sensory stimuli, but most conclude that many regions of the brain are activated regardless, and some support the notion that emotional stimuli drain the brain of its ability to process other types of stimuli simultaneously. Further research needs to be conducted however, because great mystery still exists as to the extent of impact emotional stimuli have on the brain.
Literature Review
The first research study examined, "Attention Control of the Processing of Neural and Emotional Stimuli" very soundly supports the notion that many regions of the brain are activated during emotional stimuli, and that to process such stimuli the brain must drain resources from other regions. Specifically, this study suggests that at the neural level, there is "competition among multiple stimuli" evidenced by "mutual suppression of their visually evoked responses" (Pessoa et. al, 2002). Thus, when one region of the brain is activated by a particular emotional stimuli, the brain will subsequently drain resources it might use to activate other regions of the brain to process other types of incoming stimulation. Attention is often affected by this hierarchy of processing within the brain.
This study also verified that "top-down biasing of visual signals comes from the brain primarily in the areas of the frontal and parietal cortex" (Pessoa, et. al, 2002). Meaning, these regions of the brain are biased regarding their response and processing of emotional stimuli. The evidence uncovered by the researchers in this case suggests that if emotional stimuli enter the brain via visual stimulus the frontal and parietal cortex is activated.
This research examination also supports the notion that emotional stimuli are capable of automatically activating these brain regions, and that all brain regions respond in a different manner to emotional cues, including the amygdala, which according to this study, only responds when "sufficient attentional resources were available to process faces" (Pessoa, et. al 2002). The amygdala will not necessarily therefore, respond to all types of emotional stimuli, and may in fact be very selective in nature.
Interestingly, this last point leads to the conclusion that attentional resources within the brain must be leftover after processing emotional stimulus in order to complete an entire cognitive process. Some people might have a deficit in attentional processing ability after having processed emotional stimuli, and further research is being conducted in this area to examine the potential link between emotional processing and attention deficit disorders (Pessoa, et. al, 2002).
K.S. LaBar in an early study entitled "Arousal-mediated memory consolidation: Role of the medial temporal lobe in humans" documents the effects of emotional arousal on memory and examines the mechanism through which arousal and emotional stimuli...
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