Taak 4 Biological explanation of anxiety disorders & treatment
Leerdoelen
1. Welke medicatie wordt gebruikt voor angststoornissen?
2. Neurotransmitters die daarbij meespelen (dus waarom wordt de medicatie juist
gebruikt?)
3. Welke breingebieden zijn erbij betrokken?
4. Model van Ledoux
5. Fear network
6. Breingebieden bij emotieregulatie
7. Hoe bewijzen neuro-imaging studies de voorgaande leerdoelen?
Bron: Ledoux
Classical conditioning
● The irrelevance and novelty of the lights and sounds used in this type of conditioning
help to ensure that the animals have not already developed strong emotional reactions
to them
○ Although: do not require complicated cognitivev processing
from the brain
Cerebral roots of learning fear
● Auditory cortex is not needed in order to learn many things about
simple acoustic stimuli
● Neural projections are the connections through which the
stimulus elicits the response we identify with fear →
Amygdala
○ Critical site of learning because of its central location
between input and output stations
■ Each route that leads here delivers unique information
to the organ
● Sensory thalamus: crude perception of the
external world
○ Quite fast
● From the cortex: detailed and accurate
representations, allowing us to recognize an object by sight or
sound
,● The central nucleus was a crucial part of the system through which autonomic
conditioned responses are expressed
○ It provides connections to the various brain stem areas involved in the control of
a spectrum of responses
● Information reaching the lateral nucleus can influence the central nucleus via the
basolateral nucleus
○ Other possibilities for the lateral nucleus to communicate with the central nucleus
● Emotional significance determined by sound and environment it occurs in
○ So: not dangerous on itself, but under particular conditions
● Hippocampus plays important role in hprocessign complex information such as details
about the spatial environment, where activity is taking place
● Auditory cortex is involved in establishing the fear response, at least when simple
auditory stimuli are applied
○ It is establishing its own record of the event
, ● Damage to the perirhinal cortex prevents the expression of a previously learned fear
response
● Mechanism through which fear conditioning is learned: the cortex is the preferred
pathway to the amygdala and that thalamic projections are not normally used during
learning, unless the cortex is damaged at the time of learning
● How emotional memories are established and stored:
○ Glutamate: glutamate transmission implicated in memory formation
■ Found at synapses in lateral nucleus
● Basic ingredient of conditioning: lateral nucleus
○ Acoustically stimulated cells → 2 classes
■ Habituating cells:
● Stopped responding to the repeated sound
○ Suggesting that they might serve to detect any sound that
was unusual or different
○ Could permit the amydala to ignore a stimulus once it
became familiar
■ Consistently responsive cells:
● High intensity thresholds
○ Only loud sounds could activate them (loudness plays role
in judging distance)
● Nearby: more dangerous
● Sound combined with shock → might act on these cells to
lower their threshold
○ Increasing cell’s sensitivity to the same stimulus
● Elimination of emotional learning
○ Prefronal areas normally control expression of emotional memory and prevent
emotional responses once they are no longer useful
○ Functional variation in the pathway between this region of the cortex and the
amygdala may make it more difficult for some people to change their emotional
behavior
■ Extinction is an active learning process
Leerdoelen
1. Welke medicatie wordt gebruikt voor angststoornissen?
2. Neurotransmitters die daarbij meespelen (dus waarom wordt de medicatie juist
gebruikt?)
3. Welke breingebieden zijn erbij betrokken?
4. Model van Ledoux
5. Fear network
6. Breingebieden bij emotieregulatie
7. Hoe bewijzen neuro-imaging studies de voorgaande leerdoelen?
Bron: Ledoux
Classical conditioning
● The irrelevance and novelty of the lights and sounds used in this type of conditioning
help to ensure that the animals have not already developed strong emotional reactions
to them
○ Although: do not require complicated cognitivev processing
from the brain
Cerebral roots of learning fear
● Auditory cortex is not needed in order to learn many things about
simple acoustic stimuli
● Neural projections are the connections through which the
stimulus elicits the response we identify with fear →
Amygdala
○ Critical site of learning because of its central location
between input and output stations
■ Each route that leads here delivers unique information
to the organ
● Sensory thalamus: crude perception of the
external world
○ Quite fast
● From the cortex: detailed and accurate
representations, allowing us to recognize an object by sight or
sound
,● The central nucleus was a crucial part of the system through which autonomic
conditioned responses are expressed
○ It provides connections to the various brain stem areas involved in the control of
a spectrum of responses
● Information reaching the lateral nucleus can influence the central nucleus via the
basolateral nucleus
○ Other possibilities for the lateral nucleus to communicate with the central nucleus
● Emotional significance determined by sound and environment it occurs in
○ So: not dangerous on itself, but under particular conditions
● Hippocampus plays important role in hprocessign complex information such as details
about the spatial environment, where activity is taking place
● Auditory cortex is involved in establishing the fear response, at least when simple
auditory stimuli are applied
○ It is establishing its own record of the event
, ● Damage to the perirhinal cortex prevents the expression of a previously learned fear
response
● Mechanism through which fear conditioning is learned: the cortex is the preferred
pathway to the amygdala and that thalamic projections are not normally used during
learning, unless the cortex is damaged at the time of learning
● How emotional memories are established and stored:
○ Glutamate: glutamate transmission implicated in memory formation
■ Found at synapses in lateral nucleus
● Basic ingredient of conditioning: lateral nucleus
○ Acoustically stimulated cells → 2 classes
■ Habituating cells:
● Stopped responding to the repeated sound
○ Suggesting that they might serve to detect any sound that
was unusual or different
○ Could permit the amydala to ignore a stimulus once it
became familiar
■ Consistently responsive cells:
● High intensity thresholds
○ Only loud sounds could activate them (loudness plays role
in judging distance)
● Nearby: more dangerous
● Sound combined with shock → might act on these cells to
lower their threshold
○ Increasing cell’s sensitivity to the same stimulus
● Elimination of emotional learning
○ Prefronal areas normally control expression of emotional memory and prevent
emotional responses once they are no longer useful
○ Functional variation in the pathway between this region of the cortex and the
amygdala may make it more difficult for some people to change their emotional
behavior
■ Extinction is an active learning process
