This gives rise to raw, primitive affect states that vary according to pleasure and un-pleasure and degree of arousal. The brain has specialized networks that sense the body’s state and predict, based on past experience and current context, future energy demands. Emotions are not universal, cultures can vary greatly in the emotions they construct.įeldman Barrett’s constructionist theory is that we construct complex mental experiences such as emotions from more core components. Our construction of what the other is feeling and the other’s construction of his or her emotion may or may not be the same. We do not implicitly sense or know what the other is feeling – we construct the other’s emotional state.
Emotions involve the whole brain, one network can activate varied emotions and one emotion can be activated by varied networks. She argues from her own research, including f-mri studies, and other scientific studies, that there are no dedicated circuits for emotions and no unique physiological or bodily expression. Feldman-Barrett takes particular aim at Pankseep and the tradition behind him. The affective neuroscientist who has been a darling of “neuropsychoanalysis”, the late Jaak Pankseep, believed that each emotion has a uniquely dedicated sub-cortical circuit.
Psychoanalytic notions of implicit mentalizing and non-verbal affect attunement rely, to some extent, on this old view. The old view, from Darwin to Tomkins, is of universal emotions, with dedicated neural circuits and unique physiologic and facial expressions that are universally recognized. This book, by a neuroscientist who studies emotion, presents a new theory of emotion that challenges and complicates the view of emotions that many of us have come to rely on. How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain.
0 kommentar(er)
