Psychology Canli et al.
Brain Scans and Emotions
• Title:
• Event-Related Activation in the Human Amygdala Associates with Later Memory for Individual
Emotional Experiences
• Year: 2000
Psychology being investigated
• There are two types of basic medical scans - structural and functional scans. Structural scans
take detailed pictures of the structure of the brain whereas Functional scans are able to show
activity levels in di erent areas of the brain.
• Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a neuroimaging procedure using MRI
technology that measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood ow.
• fMRI is a non-invasive brain scanning technique. It uses radio waves coupled with a strong
magnetic eld to create a very detailed image of the brain.
• The scanner traces the journey of strong oxygenated blood around the brain. Areas of high
activity receive more oxygenated blood. This is called the blood-oxygen-level-dependent
signal.
• The scanner maps all of the activity and produces a map of squares called voxels which
represent thousands of neutrons. The pictures are colour coded to show the intensity of activity.
• The amygdala is an almond-shaped set of neurons located deep in the brain’s medial temporal
lobe and has been shown to play a key role in the processing of emotions such as pleasure,
fear, and anger.
Background
• Imaging studies have shown that amygdala activation correlates with emotional memory in the
intact brain.
• These rst imaging studies have identi ed a correlation between amygdala activation and
declarative memory for emotional stimuli across di erent individuals. This could be for three
reasons:
I. Some individuals are more responsive to emotional experiences than others.
II. Some individuals, during a particular scanning session, may have been in some sort of state
that enhanced responsiveness to emotional experience.
III. The amygdala is responsive in a dynamic or phasic way to moment-to-moment individual
emotional experience, so that amygdala activation would re ect a exible, rapidly changing
emotional response that ought to be observable within an individual.
Aims
• To investigate whether an area of the brain called the amygdala is sensitive to di erent levels to
emotions based on subjective emotional experiences.
• To investigate whether the degree of emotional intensity a ects the role of the amygdala in
aiding memory recall of stimuli classes as being “emotional”.
Procedure
• Research method: Laboratory experiment
• Experimental design: Repeated Measures Design
• Independent Variable (IV): Intensity rating of stimuli
• Dependent Variable (DV): pixel count and percentage forgotten, familiar or remembered in
tests
• Sample: Ten right-handed healthy female volunteers were participants of this study. Females
were chosen as they are more likely to report intense emotional experiences and show more
physiological reactivity in concordance with valance judgements than men.
• Sampling technique: Volunteer Sampling
• The procedure for this experiment was divided into the behavioural procedure and the MRI.
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Brain Scans and Emotions
• Title:
• Event-Related Activation in the Human Amygdala Associates with Later Memory for Individual
Emotional Experiences
• Year: 2000
Psychology being investigated
• There are two types of basic medical scans - structural and functional scans. Structural scans
take detailed pictures of the structure of the brain whereas Functional scans are able to show
activity levels in di erent areas of the brain.
• Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a neuroimaging procedure using MRI
technology that measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood ow.
• fMRI is a non-invasive brain scanning technique. It uses radio waves coupled with a strong
magnetic eld to create a very detailed image of the brain.
• The scanner traces the journey of strong oxygenated blood around the brain. Areas of high
activity receive more oxygenated blood. This is called the blood-oxygen-level-dependent
signal.
• The scanner maps all of the activity and produces a map of squares called voxels which
represent thousands of neutrons. The pictures are colour coded to show the intensity of activity.
• The amygdala is an almond-shaped set of neurons located deep in the brain’s medial temporal
lobe and has been shown to play a key role in the processing of emotions such as pleasure,
fear, and anger.
Background
• Imaging studies have shown that amygdala activation correlates with emotional memory in the
intact brain.
• These rst imaging studies have identi ed a correlation between amygdala activation and
declarative memory for emotional stimuli across di erent individuals. This could be for three
reasons:
I. Some individuals are more responsive to emotional experiences than others.
II. Some individuals, during a particular scanning session, may have been in some sort of state
that enhanced responsiveness to emotional experience.
III. The amygdala is responsive in a dynamic or phasic way to moment-to-moment individual
emotional experience, so that amygdala activation would re ect a exible, rapidly changing
emotional response that ought to be observable within an individual.
Aims
• To investigate whether an area of the brain called the amygdala is sensitive to di erent levels to
emotions based on subjective emotional experiences.
• To investigate whether the degree of emotional intensity a ects the role of the amygdala in
aiding memory recall of stimuli classes as being “emotional”.
Procedure
• Research method: Laboratory experiment
• Experimental design: Repeated Measures Design
• Independent Variable (IV): Intensity rating of stimuli
• Dependent Variable (DV): pixel count and percentage forgotten, familiar or remembered in
tests
• Sample: Ten right-handed healthy female volunteers were participants of this study. Females
were chosen as they are more likely to report intense emotional experiences and show more
physiological reactivity in concordance with valance judgements than men.
• Sampling technique: Volunteer Sampling
• The procedure for this experiment was divided into the behavioural procedure and the MRI.
fi fi ff fi ff ff fl fl ff fl
