How should neuroscience study emotions? by distinguishing emotion states, concepts, and experiences

Abstract

In this debate with Lisa Feldman Barrett, I defend a view of emotions as biological functional states. Affective neuroscience studies emotions in this sense, but it also studies the conscious experience of emotion (‘feelings’), our ability to attribute emotions to others and to animals (‘attribution’, ‘anthropomorphizing’), our ability to think and talk about emotion (‘concepts of emotion’, ‘semantic knowledge of emotion’) and the behaviors caused by an emotion (‘expression of emotions’, ‘emotional reactions’). I think that the most pressing challenge facing affective neuroscience is the need to carefully distinguish between these distinct aspects of ‘emotion’. I view emotion states as evolved functional states that regulate complex behavior, in both people and animals, in response to challenges that instantiate recurrent environmental themes. These functional states, in turn, can also cause conscious experiences (feelings), and their effects and our memories for those effects also contribute to our semantic knowledge of emotions (concepts). Cross-species studies, dissociations in neurological and psychiatric patients, and more ecologically valid neuroimaging designs should be used to partly separate these different phenomena.

A Network Model of the Emotional Brain

“…The framework raises several important questions (see Outstanding Questions), too, while describing why the impact of emotion is so wide ranging. It vividly highlights the limitations of pointing to specific structures as the “emotional brain,” or even specific levels of the brain, as in the focus on cortex of some human work and the focus on subcortex in some animal work (see also [80]). In the end, emotion is a large-scale network property of brain function.…”

“…In particular, investigators should attempt to disentangle the neural correlates of emotions from all other processing with which they interact [73]. The present framework advocates, in contrast, to focus on interactions because the brain’s structural-functional organization is strongly non-modular.…”

“…Strong evidence also links emotions to the body [79]. Despite varying views (for discussion, see [80]), the brain basis of emotion has centered on a relatively small number of brain structures, including, subcortically, amygdala, hypothalamus, periaqueductal gray, and ventral striatum, and cortically, insula, orbitofrontal cortex, and medial PFC [81, 82]. …”

An integrative review of the enjoyment of sadness associated with music

“…A biological account of emotions -consisting of physiological, neural and endocrine levels -is currently far from being understood in detail [49]. However, a great deal of the main components involved in emotions within each level is …”

Categories and Their Role in the Science of Emotion

“…Psychological essentialism permits scientists to posit a hypothetical or unseen essence in the absence of any evidence whatsoever of what the essence might be. For example, Ekman’s hypothetical affect program (Ekman & Cordaro, 2011; Tomkins & McCarter, 1964), Panksepp’s hypothetical FEAR system (Panksepp, 1998), and Adolphs’s “central emotion state” or “functional emotion state” (Adolphs, in press; Anderson & Adolphs, 2014) are all examples of psychological essentialism; even the idea that an appraisal is a causal mechanism that produces an identical, descriptive mental feature of the same name can be understood as an example of psychological essentialism.…”