Book chapter
52 - Mind-Body Interactions
Primer on the Autonomic Nervous System, pp.194-197
Elsevier Inc, Second Edition
2004
DOI: 10.1016/B978-012589762-4/50053-0
Abstract
This chapter discusses the use of skin conductance response (SCR) in neurological patients with brain damage, to study processes such as nonconscious memory, nonconscious learning, and emotional processing. The SCR is considered to be a part of the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), although the neural mechanisms for the higher-level control skin conductance are complex and not well understood. Because SCRs are relatively easy to measure and provide reliable indexes of a wide variety of psychological states and processes, SCRs have been the most popular aspect of ANS activity used to study human cognition and emotion. Using SCRs, it was discovered that patients with prosopagnosia, despite their profound inability to recognize familiar faces, could still discriminate those faces nonconsciously. The phenomenon of nonconscious recognition of familiar stimuli has been revealed in the auditory modality. In the experiment discussed in the chapter, the patient produced discriminatory SCRs to the target stimuli. This outcome suggests that there is a preserved route from sensory input to ANS effectors—such as the amygdala—probably again through the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- 52 - Mind-Body Interactions
- Creators
- Daniel Tranel - Department of Neurology University of Iowa College of Medicine Iowa City, Iowa, USA
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- Primer on the Autonomic Nervous System, pp.194-197
- Edition
- Second Edition
- DOI
- 10.1016/B978-012589762-4/50053-0
- Publisher
- Elsevier Inc
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2004
- Academic Unit
- Neurology; Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
- Record Identifier
- 9984002313102771
Metrics
27 Record Views