Lily Thom
This week’s readings examined some of the ways that neuroscience might contribute to psychiatry and the emerging interdisciplinary field of social neuroscience. Cacioppo et al make an argument for neuroscience’s ability to contribute to our understanding of mental disorders. I thought the work effectively strikes a balance between social and biological factors and gets at the heart of how inextricable these two forces are in determining human behavior. They give an impressively extensive overview of neuroscience findings, which was very exciting because now we really have a context for how all these findings fit into what we have learned this semester.
Kandel’s look at interdisciplinary possibilities is very critical of the psychiatric side of the field, particularly because of its roots in psychoanalytic theory. However, Kandel does a good job of explaining the historical reasons why psychoanalysis split with biology and showing that this is not a predestined or natural divide for these fields. He emphasizes that this schism occurred in part because neural findings at the time were just not advanced enough to contribute to Freud’s emerging model in a meaningful. Yet with our current understanding of the brain and genetic expression Kandel proposes some ways in which the fields might find common interest. It’s interesting to imagine how Freud’s model of the mind might be different if he had access to the findings Kandel discusses. On the other hand, neuroscience’s model of the mind may also look different without Freud’s contributions on conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind.
Gross’ discussion of emotion regulation focuses on many distinctions between different aspects of emotional experience. I was intrigued by this comment: “I prefer to think of a continuum from conscious, effortful, and controlled regulation to unconscious, effortless, and automatic regulation (275).” Especially in light of the findings about unconscious emotion, I think that this is a helpful model. I think this speaks to LeDoux’s model by acknowledging a range of interactions between feelings and conscious appraisal. What do others think?
Lerner et al study the differences between indignation (anger and disgust) and fear in response to “annoyingly difficult stress-challenge tasks.” They found that fear displays were positively associated and indignation displays were negatively associated with cardiovascular and cortisol stress levels. They distinguished between indignation, as a situation-specific response and dispositional hostility as a stress disorder with comorbidities. Thus, it seems that in certain situations anger is an adaptive response that can mediate stress. This made me think back to a study that arose in my presentation about parent-child discussion of emotion. The study (Miller and Sperry, 1988) illustrated a difference in expressions of anger between inner-city, single working-class mothers and upper-middle class parents. For working-class mothers, anger was an important tool to teach children who needed to learn to face challenging situations throughout life. Lerner at al explain that indignation can confer a sense of control. This seems to allow the angry study participants to externalize the stressful, annoying aspects of situations rather than internalizing stress or blaming themselves. This may be a truly important skill for working-class people who may face unfair, discriminatory or dehumanizing situations on a daily basis. Interestingly, anger and indignation are usually a fundamental part of movements for social change and civil rights struggles. Perhaps this is because those emotions infer on oppressed people that sense of control that Lerner at al mention. However, Lerner et al point out that adaptive use of indignation may easily approach chronic hostility and its accompanying health disorders.
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Lily, you bring up a really important point that several of the readings addressed, which is about the relation between emotion regulation and social interaction which can have a profound and marked effect on the body and its functioning. Gross talks about psychosomatic disorders, and how they can be related to physical health. This also reminded me of our readings on the relationship between social and physical pain, and how they often accompany each other. Kandel also talked quite a bit in his article about the effects that psychtherapy and psychpharmacology have on the brain itself. I read recently that treatments within a clinical setting were most effective when using both therapy and pharmacology (more so that using only one of the two methods). Kandel certainly alludes to this, although I don't think he ever said it outright. But the importance of behavior modification (or emotion regulation, as you might say) is definitely intensified and complemented by therapy, as he puts it.
The study on facial expressions of emotion and neuroendocrine and cardiovascular stress responses noted that correlations between anger and fear and biological stress responses emerged with muscle movements in the lower face, and that future studies should investigate if these muscles are more highly connected with biological stress responses. This surprised me since I have read so much research about autism and how it is a huge problem that individuals on the autism spectrum spend significantly less time looking at the eyes in social situations since so much information is revealed in the eyes. If the biological stress response is most connected with lower face muscles, is this response visible in the eyes?
I was also interested in Gross’ ideas about emotional regulation. I think one of the main themes that has come up in our course is that of the dichotomy of autonomic emotional reactions (which some do not even consider emotions necessarily, and emotional reactions of which we are conscious and can thus regulate deliberately. But it is important to recognize that some emotional regulation, which we normally consider to be a conscious process, could occur on an automatic, unconscious level. There may be instances where a potentially dangerous stimuli is both acknowledged and disregarded unconsciously. I was thinking of soldiers in the field who are constantly bombarded by potentially lethal stimuli, the majority of which are probably harmless. Their increased vigilance probably relies more on their automatic processing of stimuli, and they may develop a more keen sense of when to turn off the excitation switch, even before they are aware that they are excited and potentially scared.
I’d also like to question the hierarchy of lower order specific emotions within higher order valenced mood categories on page 273 of the Gross article. If one clouds (or biases) action and the other clouds cognition- why is this value judgment employed? Distinction may be necessary, but I wonder what values are being expressed… especially since emotions can lead to action in such a powerful way, as Gross goes on to explain.
Lily, the study you describe on expressions of anger sounds really interesting-hope to hear more about it in class.
I find your discussion on anger-indignation really thought-provoking. One could conclude that anger is produced simply by a loss of control, or the fear of such a loss, but how intriguing that anger could be a mechanism by which the accompanying stress is mediated and a sense of control regained. You also emphasize Lerner’s clarification that “it is probably not adaptive…to chronically approach the world with a hostile edge.” I would wonder, might it be the case that anger alleviates stress levels in the short term, while not really achieving any meaningful resolution? Perhaps anger, and in some ways indignation, momentarily offer the subject a sense that s/he is assuming a less passive posture, but ultimately does it not result in a kind of continuous deferring? The fight response itself becomes a kind of veiled flight.
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