Lectures neuroscience of social behavior & emotional disorders
_________________________________Week 1__________________________________
Knowledge clips part 1:
Psychological methods of SNS:
Subjective measures
→ emotional experience. For example how someone experienced a certain situation,
mood, feelings etc.
→ personality questionnaires (for instance: STAI/STAS, LSAS, EQ-SQ, BIS-BAS etc.)
How to use in SNS?
→ useful as a control variable, for correlation with other measure, or for comparing different
studies.
Observational measures: what will the participant do?
→ frequency of behaviors. Often used in animal studies for example, or infant studies
(hard to ask infants about some particular stuff, like feelings)
- scoring and counting of behaviors
- camera (blinding, inter-rater reliability)
- eye-tracking
Performance measures: measuring speed, reaction time and accuracy. Very stable
measure.
- also IQ tests
- (emotion) recognition tests
- selective attention
→ implicit association test
→ stroop task
- classical task
- emotional task (interference of emotion)
, - facial fear stroop (interference of expression). Studies say that seeing an
angry face, makes the response of the participant slower. See book p. 308 for
further explanation.
Physiological measures:
→ the body is controlled by the brain, through the spinal cord. This is the (para)sympathetic
nervous system
(electro)physiological methods:
→ the goal is to measure bodily reactions that underlie/precede (social) behavior
3 ways:
- skin conductance
- heart rate, respiration
- electromyography (EMG)
Skin conductance response (SCR):
→ measuring sweat glands reactivity. Related to sympathetic arousal
- peak between 1-5s
- can occur in absence of conscious perception
, Heart rate: declaration (preparing for danger) and acceleration (active escape or attack)
→ another measure can be heart rate variability (HRV):
more variability = rest = parasympathetic
less variability = concentration/enhanced attention = sympathetic
Electromyography (EMG): measure of muscle activity
→ measures potential between pairs of close electrodes
An example of this is mimicking facial expressions: people automatically mimic facial
expressions (affective empathy). This is something that can be measured by EMG.
Another type of EMG is startle potentiation:
- for example: eye blink potentiation. When in a stressful or threatening situation, the
startle is bigger/higher.
→ the measure between the threatened startle and the non-threatened startle is the
fear reactivity (in an experiment)
Further info about electrophysiological brain imaging:
→ Structure of the neuron: cell body, axon, dendrites
An axon creates action potentials:
_________________________________Week 1__________________________________
Knowledge clips part 1:
Psychological methods of SNS:
Subjective measures
→ emotional experience. For example how someone experienced a certain situation,
mood, feelings etc.
→ personality questionnaires (for instance: STAI/STAS, LSAS, EQ-SQ, BIS-BAS etc.)
How to use in SNS?
→ useful as a control variable, for correlation with other measure, or for comparing different
studies.
Observational measures: what will the participant do?
→ frequency of behaviors. Often used in animal studies for example, or infant studies
(hard to ask infants about some particular stuff, like feelings)
- scoring and counting of behaviors
- camera (blinding, inter-rater reliability)
- eye-tracking
Performance measures: measuring speed, reaction time and accuracy. Very stable
measure.
- also IQ tests
- (emotion) recognition tests
- selective attention
→ implicit association test
→ stroop task
- classical task
- emotional task (interference of emotion)
, - facial fear stroop (interference of expression). Studies say that seeing an
angry face, makes the response of the participant slower. See book p. 308 for
further explanation.
Physiological measures:
→ the body is controlled by the brain, through the spinal cord. This is the (para)sympathetic
nervous system
(electro)physiological methods:
→ the goal is to measure bodily reactions that underlie/precede (social) behavior
3 ways:
- skin conductance
- heart rate, respiration
- electromyography (EMG)
Skin conductance response (SCR):
→ measuring sweat glands reactivity. Related to sympathetic arousal
- peak between 1-5s
- can occur in absence of conscious perception
, Heart rate: declaration (preparing for danger) and acceleration (active escape or attack)
→ another measure can be heart rate variability (HRV):
more variability = rest = parasympathetic
less variability = concentration/enhanced attention = sympathetic
Electromyography (EMG): measure of muscle activity
→ measures potential between pairs of close electrodes
An example of this is mimicking facial expressions: people automatically mimic facial
expressions (affective empathy). This is something that can be measured by EMG.
Another type of EMG is startle potentiation:
- for example: eye blink potentiation. When in a stressful or threatening situation, the
startle is bigger/higher.
→ the measure between the threatened startle and the non-threatened startle is the
fear reactivity (in an experiment)
Further info about electrophysiological brain imaging:
→ Structure of the neuron: cell body, axon, dendrites
An axon creates action potentials:
