Differentiation of Primary Emotions through
Neuromodulators: Review of Literature
Simeng
Gu, Fushun Wang, Tifei Yuan, Benyu Guo, Jason H Huang
Simeng Gu, Fushun Wang, Department of Psychology, Nanjing
University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, 210023 China
Fushun Wang, Center of Translational Neuromedicine, Department of
Neurosurgery, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, 14643, USA
Simeng Gu, Tifei Yuan, Benyu Guo, Department of
Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
Jason H Huang, Department of Neurosurgery, Baylor Scott & White
Health, Temple, Texas 76508, USA
Correspondence to: Fushun Wang, MD, PhD, Department of
Psychology, Nanjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, China
Email: fushun_wang@urmc.rochester.edu
Telephone: +1-585273-2868
Received: December 22,
2014
Revised: February 8, 2015
Accepted: February 9, 2015
Published online: May 13, 2015
ABSTRACT
Emotional
mental disorders are a leading cause of disabilities worldwide. Despite the
obvious importance of emotion for human existence, controversy still abounds
over the definition of emotion, the number of emotions that exit, whether
different emotions have different physiological signatures. In this paper, we
review papers about the emotional functions of neuromodulators: dopamine (DA),
norepinephrine (NE), serotonin (5-HT) and acetyl choline (ACh), and propose
that they act as the primary neural basis for 5 primary emotions (joy,
anger/fear, sadness and missing). DA is a rewarding signal for salient stimuli
such as food, sex and other needs. 5-HT has been related to depression for
decades, it might be a marker for dislike/disgusting things. NE is the
substrate for surprise, whose release induces fight or flight behaviors, or
fear and anger emotions. Even though anger and fear are common emotions, there
are no previous papers differentiating them or probing into their relationships.
Here we found that fear and anger usually come hand in hand with fear followed
by anger. And we give an equation to describe their relationships: The total
amount of Surprise/stress = fear + anger. This equation fits in both duration
and tension. Finally we introduced ACh emotions, which are opposite to NE
induced stressful emotions. These emotions include missing and wanting,
calm/tame, affectionate, submissive, et al. The significance of ACh emotions
lies in the treatment for aggressive, impulsive behaviors, or phobia and manic
disorders. In all, there might be 5 basic emotions (joy, anger/fear, sadness
and missing).
© 2015 ACT. All
rights reserved.
Key words: Neuromodulators; Basic emotions; Serotonin; Dopamine;
Norepinephrine
Gu SM, Wang FS,
Yuan TF, Guo BY, Huang JH. Differentiation of Primary Emotions through
Neuromodulators: Review of Literature. International
Journal of Neurology Research 2015; 1(2): 43-50 Available from: URL:
http://www.ghrnet.org/index.php/ijnr/article/view/986
INTRODUCTION
Emotional mental disorders are a leading cause of disabilities
worldwide. Despite the obvious importance of emotion for human existence,
scientists concerned with human nature have not been able to reach a consensus
about what emotion is[1]. Controversy still abounds over the
definition of emotion, the number of emotions that exit, whether different
emotions have different physiological signatures[1-4]. Although
there has been no shortage of psychological research on these topics, the
findings have not resolved many of the issues. Information about the
representation of emotions in the brain may shed light on the nature of
emotional processes[1]. Like color, people will never imagine that
there are only three primary colors, if not for the physiological proof of
three different kinds of conic cells in the eye, but emotion seems much more
complicated.
Studies of the
neural basis of emotion have a long history, and are still an active field of
experimental and theoretical research. Most of the work focuses on identifying
neural structures responsible for the experience of particular emotions. This
kind of research culminated around mid-century in the limbic system theory of
emotion. The neural anatomical basis of emotion helped us find important
structures involved in primary emotions, but the structure for emotions is
usually mixed and widespread in the brain, which suggests an alternative
approach: neuromodulators. With the development of drugs for the affective
disorders, catecholamine was shown to be the substrate for emotion ever since
the 50s-60s in last century[5]. Even though many years have passed,
the effects of catecholamine in treating affective diseases are still quite
mixed. For example, antidepressant drugs affect almost all the catecholamine
neuromodulators and are used for almost all affective diseases such as anxiety,
phobia, depression et al. There is a need to improve the conceptualization and
classification of the emotional states and the involvement of the
neuromodulators. Here we review papers about their differences in modulating
emotions, and propose that these three monoamine neuromodulators together with
ACh underlie the 5 primary emotions of human (DA-pleasant, 5-HT-unpleasant,
NE-surprise/anger-fear, ACh-missing).
Dopamine
(DA) C pleasant marker
DA has been linked to rewarding processes in the brain since 1980, when
Wise first proposed the hedonic hypothesis of DA[6,7], who proposed
that DA is a signal of stimulus salience, providing feeling of enjoyment. DA is
a rewarding signal for salient stimuli such as food, sex and other needs, which
are excited by reward seeking behaviors. The reward depends on the needs of
subjects. Human needs were classified by Maslow (1943) as the hierarchy of
needs, from physiological needs to social needs. The physiological needs are
required for human survival; they are so primitive in evolution that they
responded just automatically, and they were used as unconditioned rewarding
stimuli in Pavlovian experiments. Social needs include love, trust, esteem,
pride and self-actualization etc, which depends upon human appraisal.
Many
pharmacological and behavioral studies on intracranial self-stimulation
established the important role of the medial prefrontal DA system in positively
motivated behavior[8]. We dont need to review them here, for the
rewarding role of DA has been well documented in many aspects. For example,
drug addictions are involved in the reward system by affecting DA release and
reuptake. Imaging studies revealed that drug-naive individuals show enhanced DA
levels in the striatum upon exposure to psycho-stimulants such as cocaine and
amphetamine; in contrast, decreased striatum DA responses were reported in
detoxified cocaine abusers[9,10]. Furthermore, individuals with a
history of abuse of alcohol, cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine display lower
levels of DA receptor binding compared to non-abusers[11]. Together,
these studies suggest an involvement of DA neurotransmission in the acute and
long-term effects of abused drugs[12].
Over the past
several decades, extensive studies have refined the function of DA, and
theories concerning the role of midbrain DA on behavior have also changed
dramatically[12,13]. For example, empirical evidence revealed that
global DA depletion does not impair hedonic (liking) response to primary reward
such as the preference for sucrose over water. These observations have led to a
formulation that the contribution of DA includes an effect on motivated
behavior toward desired goals. Mesolimbic DA is also involved in aversively
motivated behaviors. Medial hypothalamic stimulation, which has been considered
to cause a primary aversive state, cause significant decrease in extracellular
DA[14]. However, when rats can lever-press to escape the
stimulation, NAc DA increased instead. This is similar to findings from Cabib[15],
that when animals were allowed to control the painful shock experience, NAc DA
metabolites increased.
The most
interesting study about DA is prediction error. Prediction error was proposed
by Schultz et al[16], who discriminate role of DA in reward
and prediction. Their connection derives from a wide variety of conditioning
experiments. They proposed that the function of DA is a signal of salience of
stimulus, for example, DA neurons are activated when animals touch a small
morsel of apple or receive a small quantity of fruit juice to the mouth. These
phased activations do not, however, discriminate between these different types
of rewarding stimuli. Aversive stimuli like air puffs to the hand or drops of
saline to the mouth do not cause these same transient activations. This
unconditioned reaction can be connected to some neutral stimuli. For example,
if presentation of a light is consistently followed by food, a rat will learn
that the light predicts the future arrival of food. Only the light with food
will induce DA release. The prediction- based explanation is that the light fully
predicts the food that arrives. Surprisingly, once the stimulus-reward
association is learned, reward delivery no longer elicits an increase in the
activity of DA neurons as it is fully expected[16]. It appears
therefore that learning is driven by deviations or errors between the
predicted time and amount of rewards. So Schultz et al proposed that DA encodes
expectations about external stimuli or reward, especially when it is uncertain
or deviation or error (prediction error)[16].
Serotonin
(5-HT) C unpleasant marker
5-HT has been related to depression for decades mostly because of the
antidepressant drugs, and till now, the mostly prescribed drugs for depression
are drugs that alter 5-HT levels. Even though 5-HT functions as a
neurotransmitter in the nervous system, it is mostly released in the gut (about
90%), where enterochromaffin cells release 5-HT in response to noxious
substance in the food. 5-HT makes the gut move faster, causing vomiting or
diarrhea. Plant seeds with 5-HT exploit this reaction to speed the passage of
seeds through the digestive tract. Animals such as wasps and scorpion sting can
induce pain, for 5-HT presents in their venom. So 5-HT give objects a
negative/disliked marker. Even in phylogenetically distant animals such as the
mollusk, 5-HT release is involved in the regulation of avoidance behavior[17].
Drugs which block 5-HT (5-HT2c receptors) make the body unable to shut off
appetite, and are associated with increased weight gain[18]. It is
really the case that people with low 5-HT showed more aggressive behavior,
dont care about the negative (punishment) results, they even commit suicide.
In 1976, Asberg and Traskman-Bendz identified a subgroup of depressed subjects
with low cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) concentrations of 5-HIAA who had a history
of serious suicide attempts[19,20]. And thereafter, the correlation
between low CSF 5-HIAA concentrations and increased risk for suicide has become
one of the most reproducible findings in biological psychiatry, with over 20
studies finding low CSF 5-HIAA concentrations in populations that attempt
suicide[21,22]. Some other studies have suggested that the deficits
in 5-HT functioning within the frontal cortex may underlie the other behavior
disturbance, such as impaired impulse control, increased incidence of violent
episodes[23,24]. Some studies even suggested that low 5-HIAA (5-HT
metabolite) in CSF is a marker for the predisposition to a wide array of
psychopathological problems, such as impulse control, suicide, impulsive fire
setting, or frequent violent criminal behavior, even alcohol intake and
dependence[25].
5-HT in the
central nervous system (CNS) mostly produced by neurons in raphe neclei, and
released into extracellular space between neurons in almost every part of the
CNS, such as medial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, hippocampus, and is involved
in appetite, sleep, mood, emotion[26]. These functions have been
revised in the past years. For example, it was thought that 5-HT induced sleep,
one of the main arguments related to the insomnia following the destruction of
midbrain raphe nuclei in the cat[27,28]. But it is currently
accepted that 5-HT functions predominantly to promote wakefulness and to
inhibit REM sleep[29], for the activity of serotonergic neurons of
the dorsal raphe nuclei decreases from waking through slow wave sleep to REM
sleep. Only under some circumstance it contribute to the increase in sleep
propensity[29]. So the function of 5-HT might act as a tranquilizer,
and many studies support this. For example, tryptophan, which is easily
converted to 5-HT in the body, is used as a tranquilizer; and it has been
proved that 5-HT is involved in the biology of torpor and hibernation and it
inhibits mitochondrial respiration.
Abundant
evidence points to a decrease of the seotoninergic system in anxiety, phobias,
panic attacks and post-traumatic stress and depression disorders based on
effects of treatments that enhance 5-HT, and the most popular kind of
antidepressant is said to increase the action of 5-HT in the brain, however, it
has been difficult to establish a primary role for 5-HT deficiency in these
diseases[30]. Even though the company called these drugs
antidepressant, actually they are good for aggressive or anxiety behaviors
instead of depression. Actually these drugs affect all the catecholamine (DA,
NE and 5-HT). For example, the first generation of antidepressants: the
monoamine oxidase inhibitor has similar effect on all catecholamine
neuromodulators. The drug companies are finding more specific drugs, the third
generation of antiderpressants: the 5-HT specific reuptake inhibitors. While it
is true that these newer drugs increase the actions of 5-HT, it is hard to find
their effects on depressant. On the contrary, selective 5-HT reuptake
inhibitors have many depression-like side effects, such as apathy,
nausea/vomiting, drowsiness, weight loss or diminished libido, even a higher
risk of suicidal behavior in children. These drugs improvement of depressive
symptoms, sometimes better than placebo, might be the result of increased
social interaction subsequent to a reduction in fear and avoidance[31].
Injecting 5-HT never reduced depression, sometimes NE or DA does. Injecting
5-HT, or increasing its activity, can cause sedation, helplessness. Learned
helplessness, a behavioral depression caused by exposure to inescapable stress,
is considered to be an animal model of human depressive disorder. Cortical
5-HTergic excess is causally related to the development of learned helplessness[32],
and learned helplessness patients have high level of 5-HT. If increasing 5-HT
is not the cure, then maybe decreasing 5-HT will be the cure. Indeed, chemicals
that antagonize 5-HT do seem to function as antidepressants[33]. It
has been found that l-tryptophan depresses while levodopa intensifies emotional
reactivity, the former lowering the level of endogenous 5-HT. And it was also
found that lack of 5-HT enhances the emotional reactivity to learned fear
memories[34]. So the major benefit of the 5-HT drug is alleviated
anxiety and improved sleep. So the term antidepressants is not correct,
actually it acts as a tranquilizer. It never relieved depression, actually it
induces more depression.
Genetic proofs
also support this point. Pet1 is specifically expressed in the 5-HT neurons and
directly activates the transcription of genes implicated in the serotonergic
machinery. Compared to WT and Pet +/- littermates, Pet -/- mice has an 80%
reduction in 5-HT tissue levels, with no significant changes in the levels of
DA[35]. These mice showed normal ambulatory activity in a novel
arena; however, they explored more in the aversive areas, which suggests
lacking of dislike marker due to low 5-HT. Additionally, these mice showed
increased levels of aggression as measured by the resident-intruder assay[35].
The hydroxylation of tryptophan into 5-hydroxy-tryptopah is the rate-limiting
step in the synthesis of 5-HT. Two isoforms of the enzyme tryptophan
hydroxylase, Tph1 and Tph2 are responsible for catalyzing this reaction. Tph2
is exclusively expressed in the 5-HT neurons of the raphe nuclei. Genetic
deletion of Thp2 was obtained in several groups. The depressive-like behavior
of the Thp2 -/- mice was evaluated. Savelieva and collegues[36]
found that these mice spent less time immobile in the test suggestive of an
antidepressant phenotype.
Another
example is the vesicular monoamine transporter (Vmat) 2, which transports
monoamines into the synaptic vesicle. The homozygote Vmat2 -/- induced a major
depletion of all monoamines and die within a few days after birth[37].
In contrast, heterozygote Vmat2 +/- mice, have 34% decrease in brain 5-HT, are
viable and showed normal growth rate and behavior. These animals also showed
significant reduction in level of DA 42% and NE, 23%. Interestingly, they
showed pronounced depressive-like phenotype characterized by increased
immobility[38]. In contrast, no anxiety phenotype was detected in a
large battery of tests. To overcome the lack of specificity, a conditional
knockout mouse was created by crossing Sert mice with Cmat2, allowing for the
deletion of the Vmat2 gene specifically in 5-HT neurons[39]. No
depression like phenotype was observed; instead they showed less latency to
reach out the food pellet in a NSF test, suggesting an anxiolytic-like
phenotype. Overall, both pharmacological and genetic studies reviewed above
prove that 5-HT is an aversive marker, which induces emotional depression.
Norepinephrine
(NE)C Surprise marker
DA and 5-HT give the value of the objects around us according to
whether they fit our needs or if they are dangerous to us. But everything in
the world, whether it is positive or negative, occurs in anticipated ways
(expected) or unanticipated ways (surprisingly). If it happens as anticipated,
people feel calm; instead if it happened surprisingly, the first reaction of
people would be scared and angry. For example, the door was knocked very
loudly, while you were focusing on your reading. The first reaction is scared
and then angry about why it was knocking so loudly. After opening the door, you
can decide if it is happy (if it is what you wanted) or sad (if it is not what
you wanted) (refer to figure1). So fear and anger are not due to likeness or
dislikeness of things themselves, instead they are due to unexpected ways these
things happen. Let us take one example from Izards paper[40], when
Rafe was hit from the back by a wheel chair, the first reaction of him was
scared and angry, and showed angry expression and clenched fist. But after he
turned back to see Rebecca, a person with hemiplegia whose wheelchair had gone
out of control and cause her to crash into Rafe. Rafes understanding changed
his anger to sadness and sympathy.
The substrate
for both fear and anger is NE. In the periphery autonomous nervous system, NE
acts as a sympathetic neurotransmitter, together with
hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA), they act as stress hormones, which
underlie fight-or-flight responses, directly increasing heart rate,
triggering the release of glucose, and increasing blood flow to skeletal
muscles. In the CNS, the NE system is considered to play an important role in
attention, sleep/wakefulness, emotion and central responses to stress. It might
also be involved in anxiety disorders, especially in panic/fear disorders[41].
NE is released from the locus coeruleus at stressful events to keep the brain
alert to the unexpected stimuli (and inhibits irrelevant stimuli), which has
been described as increasing the signal to noise of the afferents[42].
The locus coeruleus (LC) is the largest NE nucleus in the brain and projects
axons to almost all brain regions. LC is a pure NE nucleus, comprising
approximately 1500 cells on each side of the brain stem in rats. Many studies
have been conducted in LC to show its implication in sleep, attention and
alertness, anxiety and stress response[43-45]. Robust activation of
the LC has been reported after stressful stimuli in cats: an increase in firing
of LC neurons was observed following exposure to noxious air puff stimuli or
visual threat[46]. Electrical stimulation of the LC resulted in
particular behaviors that were observed in fearful or threatening situations in
the wild[47]. LC sends projection to many brain areas, such as
amygdala. It is now recognized that the amygdala plays a prominent role in
stress elicited fear and anxiety[48]. Electrical stimulation of the
amygdala promotes stress-like behavioral and autonomous reactions, whereas
ablation of Amygdala showed a marked increase of tameness, loss of motivation
and decrease of fear response to aversive stimuli and a more rapid extinction
of conditioned avoidance responses acquired preoperatively[49,50].
However there are too many papers about NE, it is impossible to review them
here. Here we will talk a little more about the relationship between anger and
fear.
It is well
known that NE release induces fight (anger) or flight (fear), which is an early
evolutionary adaptation to allow better coping with dangerous and unexpected
situations. For example, when a deer meets a lion, NE is released in both
brains, but the reaction of the deer is flight (fear), while the reaction of a
lion is fight (anger). So fear and anger are twin emotions coming from the same
neuromodulator NE, and they always come together at a stress. But they also
exclude each other in that they never occur at the same time in the same
subject, usually fear first and anger next. For example, when an aggressive
driver cut in front of you, you first reaction is scared (fear), and next you
will feel angry after and only if fear is gone. So fear is the scariness from
the unexpected coming of unpleasant/dangerous things or unexpected loss of
adored things. Anger is the blaming of the reasons for the unexpected things
after fear is gone. So both fear and anger derive from the surprising ways
things occur; if things occur just as anticipated, people will not feel scared
or angry. Fear and anger are twin emotions; they always come together with fear
followed by anger. We give the equation below, which fits in both duration and
tension.
The total
amount of Stress = fear (duration, tension) + anger (duration, tension).
If fear is stronger, anger would be relatively less for certain amount
of stress; for example, when people feel highly scared at strong dangerous
things, such as tornado, there is no time left for anger. On the contrary, when
the fear is less, anger should dominate, such as betray by a lover; or when
your kids did not listen to you and result in failure of a test. So it seems
that fear is facing dangerous /disliked things, while anger is for liked
things; this is correct at the poles of liked or disliked things. If fear
duration is similar to anger duration, they are mixed together. For example,
after class begins, the teacher tells you unexpectedly there will be test, you
will be very nervous: your first reaction will be scared, next you will be
angry. Not only the total amount of surprise will be less, the distribution of
mixed feelings will change too, and result in fear or anger dominating, if
things happened the second time or many times again. The same example: if the
teacher always gives you this kind of unexpected tests, your fear will dwindle,
and your anger will dominate. The typical example is that when two cocks first
meet, mixed feelings of fear and anger arise in both of them. Then they will
start to fight, and the results will be that one wins with the other one fails
and runs away. They dont need to fight anymore the next time they meet, the
failed one would run away with fear, and succeeded one would threaten with
anger.
It is well
documented that NE and DA are usually released together to induce aggressive
behaviors (anger); and they have come to be recognized as playing an important
role in attention and focus, which are the most activated state of emotion. On
the contrary, the interaction between NE and 5-HT to make the fear emotions is
much less documented. A considerable amount of research has focused on the
finding of low 5-HT metabolite levels in abnormal aggression, but the mechanism
is not clear. It is easy to explain using our equation shown above. At low
levels of 5-HT, people cannot feel the scary results of their behavior;
therefore they show very high anger at surprising things, which would induce
impulsive behaviors, violent or aggressive behavior, or even suicide.
Serotonergic neurons in Raphe nuclei project to key fear-related amygdala[51],
and these serotonergic inputs play a functional role the amygdala. Loud noise
increases midbrain tryptophan hydroxylase activity[52,53], but it is
blocked by a lesion of the central amygdala[54]. Within the circuits
of fear, it has been proposed that central seotonergic activity plays a crucial
role by enhancing fear through the raphe nuclei-amygdala pathway[51].
Serotonergic cells in raphe nuclei firing activity rise with restraint and dog
confrontation[55,56]. And 5-HT levels rise during inescapable shock
treatment but not during escapable shocks[57], when DA is released
as we stated before. This indicated the antagonist role of DA with 5-HT in
emotions. Izard also noticed that the uncertainty regarding whether a stimulus
will predict threat or reward, the need to pay more attention to a stimulus of
importance, or an urgency to engage in active coping are inborn to almost all
needed or disliked things[58]. Of note, the safety need in Maslows
hierarchy of need is overlapping with the vertical axis (surprise) of our model
(Figure1).
Acetylcholine
(ACh) C anticipation marker
There are considerable evidences suggesting that monoamine (including
DA, NA and 5-HT) in emotion. So far, it might be enough to propose 3 basic
emotional neuromodulators in the brain to form 4 primary emotions (joy,
sadness, fear and anger), like 3 basic colors. So it might be redundant to
involve one additional neuromodulator ACh in emotion. Indeed, there are few
reports about cholinergic involvement in emotion. In the periphery nervous
system, ACh acts as a parasympathetic neurotransmitter, and it is responsible
for stimulation of rest and digest activities that occur when the body is at
rest: including sexual arousal, salivation, tears, urination, digestion and
defecation, which is compensatory to the NE. In the CNS, ACh might act as rest
and thinking, it is the neuromodulator in the brain that can boost cognitive
function and its uptake inhibitors have been used for Alzheimer's disease. So
its function is well known in learning/reinforcement, or to form the
association between unconditioned stimulus with neutral stimulus in Pavlovian
conditioning. ACh might be the cognitive part of emotion, and the only
cognitive part in Izards emotional theory. Even though using cognitive
strategies is a good way to regulate the expectation of reward[59],
cognition is not an emotion in itself. Plutchik was the first to include
anticipation in primary emotion list. Here we still want to propose another
batch of emotions, which were omitted by many psychologists before: missing
and wanting, which was found when we tried to look for the opposite of anger
and fear. Actually the same question was already mentioned at the start of the
last section: Everything in the world, whether it is positive or negative,
occurs in ways anticipated (expected) or not anticipated (surprisingly). If it
happens anticipated, people feel calm; instead if it happened surprisingly, the
first reaction of people would be scared and angry.
What is the
opposite of anger? It is hard to find a proper English word for it. Darwin used
the related words, aggressive-submissive in his famous book about emotions
more than 100 years ago[60]. While probing into the angry emotion,
he found that even bees get angry. He described dogs at anger as retracting
upper lips, exposing teeth for biting. And in a similar fashion, dogs stand
erect, hairs on its back upright to appear large, thus threatening. On the
contrary, the dog slinks, with back down and close to the ground to show
affectionate or submissive. Therefore Darwin invokes the principles of
antithesis. He even extended it to human by showing a stance of an aggressive
man as compared to a helpless man shrugging. So the opposite emotion for anger
should be affectionate, and opposite emotion for fear might be
missing/wanting. These related emotions include/not limited to: calm,
affectionate, tame, submissive, pensiveness, and nostalgia, and ACh underlies
these emotions by inhibiting the excitation of cortex[61,62]. The
significance of ACh related emotion lies in that they can help people relax
from the stressful events. For example, nostalgia music (not sad music) can
make people calm down. Furthermore, long term stressful events usually lead to
back pain, because of long time back stance, while slink-like activity help
relax. Although ACh related emotions are not all positive, such as apprehension
and worrying which also belong to this group, the benefit of ACh related
emotions is that they are not so motivated to affect the body and spirits,
especially for the highly motivated people, who are very easily to burst into
angry even for very small unexpected things, such as the baby not listening to
him. So these emotions are the long time pursuit of many religions.
Actually, it
has long been suggested for cholinergic involvement in the depression since
1972[63]. At the time when the hypothesis was first published, the
primary evidence was that a number of cholinesterase inhibitors have been shown
to induce depression and to exhibit anergic effects[64], presumably
by increasing central acetylcholine levels[65]. For example,
physostigmine, a centrally acting cholinesterase inhibitor, was shown to
decrease manic symptoms and increase depressed reaction[65]. Later
on, many studies provided information that largely supported the hypothesis[64,66,67].
The theory was further supported by animal studies showing that mice bred
specifically for sensitivity to cholinergic agents demonstrated depression-like
behaviors[68]. Other studies found that learned helplessness and
swim stress, widely used preclinical models of depression, could induced
sensitivity to cholinergic agents[69]. In addition, the effects of
the monoamine depletory, reserpine, the mood depressing effects of which have
been used to support the monoamine hypothesis of depression, are remarkably
similar to those of the cholinesterase inhibitors. Overlapping symptoms include
apathy, lassitude, slowed down thinking, psychomotor retardation, lack of
interest, fatigue, lethargy, nightmares, and depression[65]. In
addition, reserpine has been reported to have central cholinergic properties[70].
Thus the reserpine induced effect might be due to a combination of monoamine
depletion and cholinergic activation, shifting NE-ACh balance to a cholinergic
dominance[63].
There are a
lot of reports about the interaction between ACh with catecholamine. For
example, the contradiction of NE and ACh in the affective disorder in the CNS
was reflected in their synaptic wire in amygdala[71]: ACh carries
the influence of the amygdala to other brain structures, NE inhibits the
activity of ACh[72]. Through these synaptic wires, the amygdala
filters its incoming sensory streams of information, looking for those
dangerous stimulus features which would require the organism to engage in
certain species-specific instincts, such as freezing or starting[73].
Similarly, the inhibition of ACh on DA is also involved in the predication
error experiments. As we know, ACh is involved in the conditioned learning,
after learning, light will not induce DA release, because ACh dominates and
inhibits DA release. Similarly, DA release during feeding signals food reward,
the increase in ACh in NAc has a role in the onset of satiation[74].
This increase in ACh is attenuated with sham feeding where food drained from a
gastric fistula after ingestion. Thus the food-induced DA release goes
unopposed by ACh. Hoebel and colleagues[75] suggested that the DA
and ACh balance in the NAc may affect motivation, while DA enables a person to
start moving, which ACh acts as a control to prevent over-responding and
facilitate stopping, this interaction between DA and ACh is well documented in
Parkinsons diseases.
The interaction between ACh with 5-HT has also been reported. Selective 5-HT reuptake inhibitor fluoxetine has demonstrated the ability to alleviate behavioral depression in the forced swim test, one of the potential mechanisms is to suppress cholinergic activities in the nucleus accumbens[76]. Tobacco smoking also supports the relationship between ACh and depression. The depression rates are much higher in smokers, smokers with a history of major depression have a harder time quitting smoking, and patients with depression are at a risk for developing a major depression episode. Smoker also have lower levels of monoamine oxidase A[77]. Many patients with depression fail to derive sufficient benefits from available treatment options, and with up to a third never reaching remission despite multiple trials of appropriate treatment. Novel antidepressant agents, and drugs targeting ACh receptors appear to hold promise[78].
Conclusions
Ekman devised a list of 5 basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear,
happiness, sadness and surprise[79], which are similar to our model.
Robert Plutchik proposed 8 primary emotions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust,
surprise, anticipation, trust and joy, and arranged them in a color wheel. He
was the first to put anticipation as emotion. The earliest dimensional study of
emotion came from Wundt (1897), who identified three dimensions of emotion as
pleasant-unpleasant, tension-relaxation, and excitation-calm. Actually his
dimension is very similar to our model, except that we put the last two
dimensions which are actually overlapping into one dimension. James Russells
proposed two dimensions for emotions: hedonic (pleasure-displeasure) and
arousal (rest-activated), which is similar to our model here[80].
Combined, our two-dimensions model (Figure1) derived from neuromodulators are
very similar to the previous emotional theories. In conclusion, we in this
paper propose 4 different kinds of neuromodulators that are the substrates of
emotion, which can made up 5 kinds of primary emotions: pleasant, unpleasant,
(fear and anger), and wanting.
Even though there are many
standards for primary emotions, the most important is that they should exclude
each other, which means that they should not occur at the same time. Like we
talked before, anger and fear never happen in at the same time in a same person,
so it is with happiness and sadness. It might also be right with calm and
wanting. The second rule is that they should be able to make all of the
emotions, like the 7 colors in rainbows. Let us end our paper with an example
of the emotional changes in everyday life (Figure 2): life is normally calm,
everything is as expected; then something unexpected happens, people first feel
scared (fear) and then blame (anger) the reasons for the unexpectancy after
fear is gone; then people feel happy or sad depending on whether the thing
happened fits for their needs or not. Finally, the thing goes away, and people
calm down from the happiness, or feel missing and wanting for the lost thing.
The peaceful mind will be broken again by apprehension/worrying about the uncertain
upcoming events, which will induced new emotional waves. Many similar emotional
waves, big or small, long or short, constitute our everyday emotions. So
fear-anger-happiness-sadness-calm-wanting constitute the rainbow of emotions,
they exclude each other and constitute almost all the emotions in everyday
life.
CONFLICT OF INTERESTS
The Authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
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Peer
reviewer: Abeloos
Laurence, Department of Neurosurgery, CHU Charleroi, Chausse de Bruxelles 140,
6042 Lodelinsart, Belgium.
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