Course Syllabus
Affective Neuroscience:
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Semester & Location: |
Spring 2021 - DIS Stockholm |
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Type & Credits: |
Core Course - 3 credits |
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Core Course Study Tours: |
Sweden (exact location TBA) |
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Major Disciplines: |
Neuroscience, Psychology |
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Faculty Members: |
Élodie Cauvet - eca@disstockholm.se Joshua Juvrud - joshua.juvrud@speldesign.uu.se |
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Program Director: |
Helle Rytkønen - hry@dis.dk |
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Time & Place |
Monday/Thursday 8:30 – 9:50, Location: 1E-510 |
Description of Course
Prerequisite: One semester of neuroscience, physiological psychology, or biological psychology at university level
Co-requisite: Enrollment in Affective Neuroscience Research Lab
How do we understand the interplay of human emotions and their neural networks? This course applies findings from the interdisciplinary field of neuroscience and the psychological study of cognition, emotion, and personality. Basic, complex, and social emotions are explored from the perspective of, for example, the subjective experience of emotion, non-conscious processes, how emotions are interpreted, expressed, or regulated. Affective systems, neural networks, and their relationship to cognitive processes such as attention, learning, memory, and decision making are addressed. Where relevant, human brain imaging findings, pathological conditions, treatment and cultural perspectives are considered.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
- Discuss the main theoretical perspectives in affective neuroscience
- Contrast different emotions on their physiological and neurological correlates
- Critically analyze the impact of emotions on cognitive processes, including - but not only - higher order functions
- Integrate the different levels of emotion processing (cognitive, psychological and neurological) and their interplay within multimodal models
- Compare and discuss the alterations of affect and its regulation in terms of cognitive and neural processes from typical and pathological perspective
- Reflect upon the developmental milestones of emotions and their regulation in terms of behavior and neurological process
- Present, discuss and criticize scientific papers
- Critically evaluate research methods used in the affective neuroscience field
The following topics will be covered during the course:
Module 1: Theories of emotion and its cerebral correlates from a developmental perspective
Theories of emotions
Definition and classification
The example of Social Emotions
The development of Emotion
Module 2: Affective disorders
Perception alteration and everyday life difficulties
Genetics of affective and social disorders
Remediation: clinical applications
Module 3: Emotions - mutual relationship between elicitation and cognitive skills
Emotion and the body: from touch to vision
Emotion and audition: language and music
Emotion and Olfaction: specific link to memory processes
Emotion and consciousness
Emotion and attention: bias and top down effects
Emotion regulation and the prefrontal cortex
Module 4: Variability in emotion
Sex differences
Aging
Cultural differences
Embedded within the different topics, students will acquire critical knowledge in neuroanatomy, hormonal and autonomic nervous systems, neuroimaging, physiological and psychological tools used in affective neuroscience research.
Faculty
Élodie Cauvet obtained her PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience, from Pierre & Marie Curie University in Paris (France). Her research interest started with language acquisition in infants leading to the study of the cerebral processing of language and music in adults. She became interested in neurodevelopmental disorders starting with developmental dyslexia then expending into autism spectrum disorders as well as ADHD. She is using techniques from psychology as well as neuroimaging in her research; this includes MRI (anatomical and functional) as well as EEG and eye tracking. She has been conducting her latest research at Karolinska Institutet Center for Neuro-developmental Disorders (KIND). Her interests include social cognitive skills, empathy and emotion processing within the whole spectrum of functioning from typicality to disorders such as ASD. With DIS since 2016.
Joshua Juvrud has a Ph.D. in Psychology (Uppsala University). As a research psychologist, his work has focused on the ways that novel techniques in research (eye-tracking, pupil dilation, virtual reality) can be used to assess how children and adults perceive and interpret people, emotions, and actions. Josh focuses this research in two fields. In developmental psychology at the Child and Babylab in Uppsala, he seeks to understand how children learn about their world and the social cognitive development of face perception and socialization processes such as gender, race, and ethnicity. In games research at the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design in Visby, Gotland, his work examines the psychology of people, their actions, and emotions in game development, player engagement, learning, and immersion to understand better how different game players (with different personalities, traits, and experiences) interact with various game mechanisms and are, in turn, affected by game experiences.
Reading
Required textbook
Armony, J. & P. Vuilleumier (Eds.), (2013) The Cambridge Handbook of Human Affective Neuroscience; Cambridge University Press, New York, NY.
Chapter 1: Models of emotion: The Affective Neuroscience Approach, D. Sander
Chapter 3: A Two-Way Road: Efferent and Afferent Pathways of Autonomic Activity in Emotion, N. Harrison, S. Kreibig, H. Critchley
Chapter 4: Electro- and Magneto-Encephalography in the Study of Emotion, A. Keil
Chapter 5: PET and fMRI: Basic Principles and Applications in Affective Neuroscience, J. Armony, J. Han
Chapter 6: Lesion Studies in Affective Neuroscience, L. Fellows
Chapter 8: Bodily Expressions of Emotion: Visual Cuest and Neural Mechanisms, A. Atkinson
Chapter 10: Examining Emotion Perception and Elicitation via Olfaction, A. Mohantry, J. Gottfried
Chapter 11: Emotional Voices: The Tone of the (True) Feelings: C. Brück, B. Kreifelts, T Ethofer, D Wildgruber
Chapter 12: Emotion and Music, S. Koelsch
Chapter 15: Top-Down Attention and the Processing of Emotional Stimuli, L. Pessoa, L. Oliveira, M. Pereira
Chapter 16: Emotion Regulation, K. Luan Phan, C. Sripada
Chapter 23: Empathy from the Perspective of Social Neuroscience, O. Klimecki, T. Singer
Chapter 26: Sex Differences in Emotion, A. Schirmer
Chapter 27: Development of Affective Circuitry,E. Viding, C. Sebastian, E. McCrory
Chapter 28: Emotion and aging: Linking the Neural Mechanisms to Psychological Theories, P. St Jacquest, A. Winecoff, R. Cabeza
Books: (selected chapters)
Kandel (2013): Principles of Neural Science, 5th edition, chapter 48, Emotions and Feelings and chapter 47, The Autonomic Motor System and the Hypothalamus.
Articles:
Aviezer, H., Hassin, R. R., Ryan, J., Grady, C., Susskind, J., Anderson, A., ... & Bentin, S. (2008). Angry, disgusted, or afraid? Studies on the malleability of emotion perception. Psychological science, 19(7), 724-732.
de Gelder, B., De Borst, A. W., & Watson, R. (2015). The perception of emotion in body expressions. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 6(2), 149-158.
Zou, L. Q., van Hartevelt, T. J., Kringelbach, M. L., Cheung, E. F., & Chan, R. C. (2016). The neural mechanism of hedonic processing and judgment of pleasant odors: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis. Neuropsychology, 30(8), 970.
Calvo, M. G., Gutiérrez-García, A., & Del Líbano, M. (2018). What makes a smiling face look happy? Visual saliency, distinctiveness, and affect. Psychological research, 82(2), 296-309.
Oatley, K., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2014). Cognitive approaches to emotions. Trends in cognitive sciences, 18(3), 134-140.
Field Studies
Please note that the field studies from the Affective Neuro class and lab are complementary to each other.
1) Wednesday, January 20th 14:00 - 17:30
How are emotions represented in photography? Representing and experiencing emotions
We will visit the Fotografiska museum of Stockholm. Students will team up and go through the different exhibitions for approx. 90min. Questions will be used to guide the experience and allow for reflection. These reflections will be discussed together right afterwards around a Fika.
Each student in the group will select pieces of art that depict one different emotion, analyze how these emotions are rendered, (specifically identifying which features were critical for this emotional recognition). Each student will further reflect upon the individual emotions that were elicited by these pieces. Specifically, each student will need to pay attention to their own feelings but also to the physiological responses individually experienced. Think that these emotional responses can be related to other moments in your life. Reflect on how these responses might have affected your decisions, actions etc. After the visit, we will meet for a Fika (Swedish tradition to gather around coffee and pastries) to discuss and present students reflections and findings in order to eventually define the emotions and their physiological, psychological and neural correlates. This field study constitutes the introduction and presentation of the class.
Learning objectives:
- Define different emotion terms
- Assess individual knowledge in terms of: emotion psychological constructs, psychological and cognitive models, neural representations
- Introduce the class content
- Discuss class expectations
2) Wednesday, March 3rd: 13:00 - 17:00
TBA
Study Tours
Study tours are an integral part of the class. Class content will be reviewed and integrated with real word settings (research, clinical etc.) and experience.
The goal is to experience first-hand different settings related to the class content: including high-end research lab and facilities and clinical venues. We will inquire the elicitation of emotions by different mediums as well as their subjective experience. Importantly, we will learn and use scientific objective description of their neural correlates and mechanisms.
Core Course Week - Expressing and experiencing emotions: Disorders and Remediation
Examples of activities might include:
Visit of genetic labs and discussion about the genetics of Affective Disorders
Visit of the MRI center and brain scans
Discussion around neuroendocrinology of affective disorders
Visit and discussion around depression in adolescent
Improvisation workshop: "Acting = Fake emotions?”: Experience how to display emotions and group social interaction from an acting point of view. Discuss the characteristics of such emotional displays from the emitter and receiver perspectives. Learn about the physiological and neurological processes elicited by acting/faking emotions and about group interactions. Practical experience.
Jojking workshop: expressing emotion and cultural perspective from Samis
Music therapy: Communication, contact and collaboration: grounding experiences in physio-music-therapy within psychiatry and development
Visit of internet psychiatry lab and discussion
Discussion around PTSD and remediation: emotion and memory
Stockholm part:
8th to 10th of February
Exact schedule TBA
Short Study Tour Part
Location TBA
8th to 10th of March
Exact schedule TBA
Long Study Tour: From sensory modalities to social emotions
Dates: exact dates to be confirmed. Week 16 (19th of April to 23rd of April)
Location: TBA
Some examples of learning objectives:
- Experience uni- vs. multimodal sensory input and reflect upon the related emotional components.
- Discover and integrate class content with concrete everyday experience
- Develop your understanding of social neuroscience and its relationship with emotions, moods and disorders
- Engage in critical and informed discussions with researchers and challenge you current ideas.
- Reflect upon the impact of affective and social neuroscience on societal challenges (artificial intelligence, remediation in psychiatry, education etc.)
Guest Lecturers
Monica Siquieros is a psychologist and a PhD student at the Center for Neurodevelopmental Disorders at Karolinska Institutet. In her PhD research, she aims to investigate the contribution of genetic and environmental factors to individual differences in cognitive measures associated to Autism Spectrum Disorders and Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder in children and infants combining eye-tracking, EEG and a twin design.
Lisa Espinosa is a PhD student at the Emotion Lab of Karolinska Institute. Her research creates a bridge between clinical field and experimental research by investigating how social interaction (in the form of social support) could affect emotional memory after an aversive experience.
/Lab/
Refer to the co-requisite syllabus for all details
Approach to teaching
We are enthusiastic teachers whose goal is to develop your curiosity, sense of questioning and critical thinking. As such, we encourage asking questions whether for clarification or for deepening your understanding. We believe that there is no such things as bad questions: what appears trivial might actually turn into the most interesting and insightful questions.
Each class include both lectures by the teacher and discussions led by the students. We will develop and reflect upon the emotions, mood and their typical and atypical correlates from different descriptive scales: physiological, psychological, cognitive and neural. Classes’ content relies on the readings. Content of the readings is expected to nourish the discussions and might not be developed in details during the class. However, any unclear areas, pointed out by students’ questions, will be reviewed in class.
Expectations of the students
Students are expected to be involved in their studies and are responsible for them. In addition to being present in class, having read the required readings and handing in assignments in due time (all mandatory), students are expected to participate actively in class, to create a lively and positive learning environment. This includes (but is not restricted to) participating in the discussions and asking questions to both the teacher and peers.
Students are responsible for their learning. This implies taking notes from the lecture and summarizing the content of both lectures and discussions. Presentations include graphs, pictures and illustrations necessary to understand the class. Students are expected to take notes complementing and explaining the slides. The visual presentations are a support for the content and should be treated as such and not as the main source of information. Class content delivered orally by the teacher needs to be written down individually by the students. Main discussions must be summarized by the students and transcribed on white board. A picture of these will be available on Canvas for the respective classes.
Evaluation
The course consists of lectures, discussions and assignments at home and in class as well as field studies, core course week and long study tour. Students’ attendance of the classes, visits, tours and their active participation in the discussions are mandatory and taken into account in the evaluation. In discussions and assignments (in class or in tours), students are required to demonstrate that they read and understood the required literature. They should be able to integrate their knowledge to discuss in depth research questions and topics. Showing independent and critical thinking is expected.
Grading
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Assignment |
Grade |
Percent |
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Active Class Participation |
Individual |
20% |
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Core Course Week Assignment: affective disorders |
Individual |
15% |
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Long Study Tour Assignment: Mood diary and Emotion regulation discussion |
Individual |
15% |
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Midterm |
Individual |
20% |
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Final project: integrative research paper |
Group |
20% |
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Final project: Board game creation |
Group |
10% |
| Total |
100% |
Detailed assignment description and rubrics will be available via Canvas and in-class
Descriptions of assignments
Active class participation (20%): Individual
Activity in discussions and group work. Active participation and engagement include among others 1- asking questions related to readings and material presented in class, 2- taking part in discussions, 3- being active during field trips, study tours and guest lectures. Active participation also means taking the initiative. Active participation takes into account the capacity to lead discussions during some classes that will be mentioned beforehand.
Quizzes: Active participation also includes taking the mandatory quizzes that are used to prepare the lectures. These quizzes will not be graded as such, but should be used by the students as their memo for the key points. Quizzes are present for a subset of the classes and not all. They will be taken at home and used by the students to help extract the main points of their reading. The teacher will review the answers before class and use them to tackle the most crucial, and less understood sections.
Study tours: Finally, active participation also has a component for each of the study tours (core course week and long study tour) which will take into account the contextualization and presentation of the student assigned visit. Before visits (and departure for the trips), students will be assigned to some of the visits and will have to conduct a short research on the visit. They will produce a short descriptive summary including topics related to the class as well as potential questions to ask during the visit. All short visual visit summary (max 1 page each) will be stapled together and handed in to the whole class to be used during the visits on top of the booklet delivered by the teacher. Further, before each visit, the assigned group will orally contextualize the visit.
Core Course Week Assignment: Affective Disorders (15%) : Individual
Date: TBA
Students will be assigned to one or two affective disorders. Students will have to pay specific attention during the visits and lectures for their assigned disorder in order to learn and ask as many relevant questions as possible. This includes preparing discussion topics and/or questions in advance of the academic visits. The goal is to be able, by the end of the core course weeks, mid March, to provide the class with a comprehensive presentation of the disorder and integrate the content of the core course week events and visits with the state of the art research on the disorder. In addition of the presentation, that will take place, students will have to hand in a visual summary (power point presentation slides, poster, graphs) that will summarize and integrate their knowledge of the disorder. This content will be used for the midterm exam. During class presentations, students are expected to ask questions and discuss with their peers. The involvement in the discussion will be taken into account in the core course week grade.
Midterm (20%) : Individual
Date: 22nd of February
Short answered questions (between 7 and 10) and two short essays. Short answer questions will be a combination of information recall and explanation of concepts and theories. Short essays will summarize knowledge on a specific topic covered in class and will require integration of class content. This can include describing emotional processing at neural level in a concrete everyday life situation, or proposing an experiment to answer a research question and the expected results.
Study Tour Assignment: Long Tour (15%) : individual
Date: TBA
Mood Diary and emotion regulation: use and implications in emotion regulation (5 pages max). Conduct a mood diary on yourself during the length of the study tour and analyze it. Mood diary is a powerful tool used by psychiatrists, psychologists, researchers but also everyday people to record over time their emotional status. After each visits, you will take a few minutes to record your mood, emotions and noticeable events that might have triggered these emotions. Add any additional info that you deem necessary to the understanding and analysis of your emotions. You should rate your mood on a scale, name the different emotions you felt, add your energy level and the amount of sleep in hours since they might influence emotional processing. Log the elements in the visits (or outside if you would like to share). In the end of the week, you will shortly and objectively summarize the week, then analyze your diary with a focus on emotion regulation, think about reappraisal strategies or expressive suppression, which strategies did you use or might have wanted to use? Check Cutuli et al. 2014 paper available on canvas for more complementary info on the strategies.
Final project: Serious game and the role of emotions in learning processes. (20% + 10%) : Group
The final project aims to integrate the knowledge you acquired through this class in an innovative and playful way. You will create a serious board game on the topic of “Emotions and the Brain”. The assignment consists of two parts: 1- an integrative research report on the relationship between emotions and learning through games, and 2- the creation of the serious board game.
In this group project, students will create a serious board game that covers all the topics developed in class. Ultimately, they will lead a reflection on the role of emotions in the learning process while integrating knowledge acquired in class.
The integrative research report - part 1 - aims to: (a) summarize the research process leading to the conception of the game, and (b) to reflect upon the role of emotions emanating from play session into the learning process.
The serious game - part 2 - consists of the game creation process and evaluation of the results.
You will have to work on your own for this project. Dedicated time through the semester will allow some in-class check up on advancements.
Final Project, part 1: Integrative research report (20%)
Date: TBA
The integrative research reports aims to summarize and integrate the content of this class. Specifically, you will explain in detail the topics that your game will develop, both from a neuroscience perspective but also from a game design perspective. This reflection on your game will integrate the effect of pedagogical tools on knowledge dissemination and consolidation. Both form your experience in designing this game but also playing other games: what are the effects of playing on the learning process, how are emotions used in this context. Discuss from a cognitive and affective neuroscience perspective. Scientific papers, experiments will need to support the different points developed through the paper.
More concretely, the paper can be split into 2 sections: game design and reflection on the emotions elicited by board game as an effective learning tool.
1- Game design should include a discussion of the iterative research process leading to your final board game. Why did you chose the topics, how are they best conveyed by your board game.
a) the game choice, b) what the game mechanics tries to achieve, c) the choice of content in terms of knowledge dissemination (think about your target group, your goal when designing the game),
2- Emotion in serious games and their effect on learning section should discuss the cognitive and cerebral mechanisms of learning and how emotions play a role in this process. Include also benefits and limitations of using serious gaming as a dissemination tool for others and learning tool for yourself. How building up a game is affecting/has affected your learning process? How are emotions playing a role in this specific experience regarding the learning outcome of this class. From a dissemination perspective, you will need to discuss how the board game tool is well suited to disseminate the affective neuroscience topic.
Final project, part 2: ‘Emotion and the Brain’ Serious Game (10%)
Date: TBA
The student group will be tasked to develop a serious game covering the class content. They will be able to choose form a variety of games (board games, card games, role playing games, video games). They will work on the game development through the semester. The involvement and process of board game creation will be graded by the faculty. The final board game will be presented during the showcase. During the last session, students will present shortly (10min max) the main findings from their integrative research paper.
Academic Regulations
COVID-19 statement
We all have a collective responsibility to avoid the spread of COVID-19 at DIS. Throughout this semester, please monitor yourself carefully for symptoms of COVID-19 (dry cough, high temperature, breathing difficulties, sore throat, headache, muscle pain, loss of smell/taste). If you experience any of these symptoms, please stay home and contact the DIS emergency phone. The respondent will coordinate with Academics at DIS Stockholm, who will in turn contact your individual faculty. If you are otherwise well but isolating due to possible exposure or mild symptoms, it is your responsibility to keep up with your coursework - we will organize hybrid classes for you to join via Zoom. If you are unwell due to COVID-19 and unable to attend class or study, your absence will be excused. Your faculty will work with you to ensure you are able to make up missed course content due to illness. You are still responsible for completing any missed work.
Regular regulation
Please make sure to read the Academic Regulations on the DIS website. There you will find regulations on:
DIS - Study Abroad in Scandinavia - www.DISabroad.org
Course Summary:
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