Leah Olson - The Feeling Brain: The Biology and Psychology of Emotions

The Feeling Brain

The Biology and Psychology
of Emotions

Elizabeth Johnston and Leah Olson

W. W. Norton & Company

New York London

A NORTON PROFESSIONAL BOOK

For the sources of my greatest feelings: Ron, Ross, Cam, Addie, and the memory of Nanetteebj

To Dan, whose belief that I could finish this project never faltered. I could never have done this without youlo

Contents

10. EmotionCognition Interactions: Attention, Perception, and Neuroeconomics

The Feeling Brain

Introduction

Our emotions are often frustrating and elusive. We frequently ask ourselves searching questions about them: Why am I feeling the way I am? What exactly am I feeling? Why are my emotions so unknowable to me? Why do emotions have such power to direct my life? How can I change the way I feel? Over the last two decades a scientific field has emerged that addresses these puzzling questions by exploring the brain mechanisms of emotions. The field of affective neuroscience has its roots in the work of 19th-century pioneers of biology and psychology: Charles Darwin (18091882) and William James (18421910). In the early to mid 20th century, a basic model of the emotional brain was developed and came to be known as the limbic system, but it was not until the more recent development of neuroimaging technologies that the field really exploded into a major discipline.

After years of neglect by both mainstream biology and psychology, the study of the neuroscience of emotions is now burgeoning. Although many of the specific brain regions and networks involved in the processing of emotions are beginning to be understood, there is still no single answer to the question What is an emotion? Most researchers now agree that emotional systems act to provide meaning and value to the information being processed; emotions tell us what we like and dont like, what is good for us and what is bad for us. But there remain a variety of ideas about how the hot emotions interact with cold cognitive processes to direct behavior. The evolutionarily old system of automatic emotional reactions that meet survival needs is now housed in the same brain as the slower, more deliberative cognitive processes that evolved to provide humans with the ability to reason, to plan, and to think about the future. While some researchers argue that emotions are essential for rational decision-making, others see emotional systems as functioning only as a quick and dirty gut feeling that can often lead to irrational behavior.

Different researchers focus on different aspects of emotional processing. It can be frustrating to understand current research because of the many different threads being explored. Our objective in this book is to introduce the dominant research on emotions taking place today, and to integrate that work when possible to provide a more complete view of this rapidly developing landscape. Our hope is to transform that initial frustration into recognition of the complex, multilayered, and fascinating nature of emotion through close consideration of the diverse research that now characterizes the field.

Like all good discussion topics, our guiding question What is an emotion? generates many more specific subquestions that have been taken up to varying extents by different groups of investigators. Our goal in this chapter is to introduce the questions to which we will return again and again throughout the book.

What is the function of emotions?

Why do we have emotions in the first place? Darwin first insisted that emotions and emotional expressions should be viewed as adaptive behavior shaped over evolutionary time by natural selection, equivalent to any other physical or physiological feature of an organism. Emotions serve a function. But what exactly is their function? How does their function help explain some of the persistent paradoxes about emotions, such as why we are so attuned to the most subtle expressions of emotion in anothers face yet struggle to understand our own emotions? To understand emotions, like any other evolved trait, we need to understand their evolutionary function.

How do emotions differ from other mental states?

In trying to define a complex concept like emotion, it makes sense to contrast it with what it is not. In everyday parlance, emotions are often contrasted with reason or logic and characterized as powerful but mysterious hot psychological forces often at odds with our cooler reason. The reason/emotion dichotomy is long-standing in Western thought, dating back at least to the time of Plato in Ancient Greece. In the Phaedrus dialogue, Plato provides a compelling visual analogy: The human soul is depicted as a charioteer with two horses moving in different directions. The one on the right is fair and good and listens to the reason of the charioteer, whereas the dark horse on the left is unruly and guided by passion. Ren Descartes (15961650) equated mind with thinking in his well-known cogito argument I think, therefore I am, and is perhaps the most influential advocate of a dualistic view of mind (soul) and body. However, he also equated the passions , such as the experiences of feeling fear and anger, with awareness of the movements of bodily spirits, and thus set up an equally influential dualism equating mind with cognition and emotion with the body.

Much of the Eastern philosophy that has been imported into contemporary Western culture through the growth in popularity of yoga and meditation clearly contrasts with Cartesian mind/body or thinking/feeling dualisms. The Sanskrit word yoga can be translated as yoking or joining, referring to the union of mind and body. Modern neuroscience explicitly opposes Cartesian mind/body dualism, but the idea that cognition and emotion are separate mental functions often at odds with each other has long persisted. With increased research on emotions, however, it has become increasingly difficult to parse emotion and cognition at the level of either brain or behavior, and the cognition/emotion dichotomy is coming under increased scrutiny. Indeed, many of the most intriguing studies are those showing the integration of emotion and cognition rather than their separation or the dominance of one over the other.

What is the role of the body in emotional experience?

Emotions feel like something. Is it even possible to have an emotion without having a bodily response? If your heart isnt pounding, your hands arent sweating, and your breathing doesnt become more rapid, can you still feel afraid? What is the relationship between emotions and their accompanying bodily feelings? The prominent early psychologist William James first challenged common assumptions about the relationship between an emotion and its bodily feeling in 1884, arguing against common sense that our heart doesnt pound because we are afraid; rather, we are afraid because our heart is pounding. Although this idea was roundly criticized in the early 20th century, neuroscience has recently returned to this question to more carefully explore the role of the body in emotions.