2 Neuroscience2.7 Neural circuits
2.7.1.10 Emotion and its regulation
1 min read1 figure
Written by Resident Doctor Committee · Published
Components of emotion
Emotion uses distributed networks, not a single centre.
Component | Principal systems |
|---|---|
Appraisal of threat, loss and reward | Amygdala, orbital and medial prefrontal cortex |
Subjective feeling | Insula, cingulate cortex |
Physiological arousal | Hypothalamus, brainstem |
Action tendency, such as freezing or escape | Periaqueductal grey, striatum |
Threat response
Under threat the amygdala drives the fight-or-flight response through two outputs.
Target | Arm | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Hypothalamus | Sympathetic and endocrine | Sympathetic arousal and cortisol release through corticotropin-releasing hormone and adrenocorticotropic hormone |
Periaqueductal grey | Behavioural | Patterned defensive behaviour: ventrolateral regions favour freezing, lateral and dorsolateral regions active defence |
The hippocampus supplies context, so the person can tell danger from safety.
Prefrontal cortex and moral judgement
The ventromedial prefrontal cortex generates the rapid emotional gut reaction of moral intuition. Moral judgement depends on it because it attaches emotional and bodily value to options.
Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis proposes that anticipatory bodily signals guide decisions. Ventromedial lesions can impair gambling task performance even when intelligence quotient (IQ) is preserved.
The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex serves working memory and holds regulatory goals in mind.
Regulation strategies
Process | What it changes | Limitation |
|---|---|---|
Reappraisal | Meaning, often early | Needs cognitive resources |
Expressive suppression | Outward expression, after the response develops | Feeling and arousal persist |
Extinction | Learning that a cue no longer predicts an outcome | Original learning can return with context change or stress |