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The Feeling Brain: The Biology and Psychology of Emotions
After years of neglect by both mainstream biology and psychology, the study of emotions has emerged as a central topic of scientific inquiry in the vibrant new discipline of affective neuroscience. Elizabeth Johnston and Leah Olson trace how work in this rapidly expanding field speaks to fundamental questions about the nature of What is the function of emotions? What is the role of the body in emotions? What are "feelings,” and how do they relate to emotions? Why are emotions so difficult to control? Is there an emotional brain?
The authors tackle these questions and more in this "tasting menu" of cutting-edge emotion research. They build their story around the path-breaking 19th century works of biologist Charles Darwin and psychologist and philosopher William James. James's 1884 article "What Is an Emotion?" continues to guide contemporary debate about minds, brains, and emotions, while Darwin's treatise on "The Expression of Emotions in Animals and Humans" squarely located the study of emotions as a critical concern in biology.
Throughout their study, Johnston and Olson focus on the key scientists whose work has shaped the field, zeroing in on the most brilliant threads in the emerging tapestry of affective neuroscience. Beginning with early work on the brain substrates of emotion by such workers such as James Papez and Paul MacLean, who helped define an emotional brain, they then examine the role of emotion in higher brain functions such as cognition and decision-making. They then investigate the complex interrelations of emotion and pleasure, introducing along the way the work of major researchers such as Antonio Damasio and Joseph LeDoux. In doing so, they braid diverse strands of inquiry into a lucid and concise introduction to this burgeoning field, and begin to answer some of the most compelling questions in the field today.
How does the science of "normal" emotion inform our understanding of emotional disorders? To what extent can we regulate our emotions? When can we trust our emotions and when might they lead us astray? How do emotions affect our memories, and vice versa? How can we best describe the relationship between emotion and cognition? Johnston and Olson lay out the most salient questions of contemporary affective neuroscience in this study, expertly situating them in their biological, psychological, and philosophical contexts. They offer a compelling vision of an increasingly exciting and ambitious field for mental health professionals and the interested lay audience, as well as for undergraduate and graduate students.
The authors tackle these questions and more in this "tasting menu" of cutting-edge emotion research. They build their story around the path-breaking 19th century works of biologist Charles Darwin and psychologist and philosopher William James. James's 1884 article "What Is an Emotion?" continues to guide contemporary debate about minds, brains, and emotions, while Darwin's treatise on "The Expression of Emotions in Animals and Humans" squarely located the study of emotions as a critical concern in biology.
Throughout their study, Johnston and Olson focus on the key scientists whose work has shaped the field, zeroing in on the most brilliant threads in the emerging tapestry of affective neuroscience. Beginning with early work on the brain substrates of emotion by such workers such as James Papez and Paul MacLean, who helped define an emotional brain, they then examine the role of emotion in higher brain functions such as cognition and decision-making. They then investigate the complex interrelations of emotion and pleasure, introducing along the way the work of major researchers such as Antonio Damasio and Joseph LeDoux. In doing so, they braid diverse strands of inquiry into a lucid and concise introduction to this burgeoning field, and begin to answer some of the most compelling questions in the field today.
How does the science of "normal" emotion inform our understanding of emotional disorders? To what extent can we regulate our emotions? When can we trust our emotions and when might they lead us astray? How do emotions affect our memories, and vice versa? How can we best describe the relationship between emotion and cognition? Johnston and Olson lay out the most salient questions of contemporary affective neuroscience in this study, expertly situating them in their biological, psychological, and philosophical contexts. They offer a compelling vision of an increasingly exciting and ambitious field for mental health professionals and the interested lay audience, as well as for undergraduate and graduate students.
411 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 19, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 18, 2019
Required reading for my Psychology of Emotions class. This text provides a very thorough exploration on the complex subject of emotions. While it is a textbook, the author written in a manner that is both accessible and interesting to read. My favorite chapter is titled, "Emotions and Memory." Favorite quote: "What is special about highly emotional memories is the subjective sense of vividness and believability that they convey. The ability to mentally “time travel” back to these events means that the memories themselves can be used to control and alter our emotional states" (Johnston, 2015, p. 211).
July 3, 2021
This is an excellent summary of the many contemporary theories on emotion. Noting that historical regard for emotion in the West has been biased against emotions in favor of mind (Plato, Descartes), the authors argue that emotion must be rehabilitated and seen as an integral part of mind. I agree, but I don’t see that the authors escape this dominant paradigm.
The problem begins with their stipulated definition of emotion: Emotions are immediate impulses that respond to triggering stimuli. (1) The affective aspects beyond the here and now are moods or something other than emotion. From this, the authors are led to their several references to “hot” emotions that tend to get us into problems and “cool” reason that comes to the rescue with various forms of “emotional regulation” (referred to as ER). “Mind,” in other words, largely takes control, though the authors say that our affective sides are involved, somehow, nevertheless. (2)
Though understandable given their scientific bent, the authors don’t draw from certain philosophical insights that might help to reframe our understanding of emotional life. Hume’s well-known statement that mind serves the passions flips the Western bias against emotion around. In other words, Plato’s charioteer only thinks it is in charge. For Schopenhauer, pain is emotion. We go out into the world to satisfy need and we react to stimuli to defend ourselves as needing beings. Pain is emotion. Pain is Spinoza’s “desire” (for and against). Where there’s success, there’s Spinoza’s pleasure. When there’s failure, there is Spinoza’s sadness, which is pain that either prompts us to act or react anew or to fester inside (as Freud’s energy model stresses) only to re-emerge as psychiatric disorder.
Right now, studies on human affective life is a hodgepodge of this and that. There’s a lot of swirling around within the braincase, without much attention given to the ultimate sources of our movement. These philosophical treatments – Hume, Schopenhauer, Spinoza – may be wrong in their particulars (3), but they generally help to present emotion studies in a more understandable and comprehensive picture of who we are. We survive by moving toward and against. We’re purposeful, striving, biological beings. We seek out objects or others because we need them. We react to negative triggers because they mean something to us. Relevant objects (+/-) have valence, and valence is what moves us in directed ways. Rather than getting wrapped around the axel with various terms relating to our affective life, maybe we should just stick with emotion (to move, move out), which covers this toward-against movement on behalf of survival and bodily well-being.
For most animal life, movement is of the automatic, here and now variety, which ties pain (needs, threats-harm), which is the “reason” (motive force) for action and reacting, with a relevant object (determined by a cognitive function), and behavior that links both together. Humans still have these animalistic tendencies, but we also have consciousness, though I don’t think that the authors’ discussion of LeDoux covers what I thought was his central point about its role. When walking along the trail and we see a snake-like figure, we jump back. A fraction of a second later, consciousness kicks in and tells us that it was a stick that looked like a snake. Consciousness supplements or enhances our instinctive tendencies and this helps to correct, regulate behavior. Consciousness provides more information that we can act on or react to, but emotion is primary. It is still there. Consciousness doesn’t replace fear, but provides an overlay that tells the body whether the fear is warranted. LeDoux deals with fear, but he also suggests that this model of “fear” and “consciousness” might apply to other emotions as well. And some reflections on our own day-to-day behavior across the board suggests that LeDoux may be onto something with this two-step (initial reaction versus correction or refinement).
The authors are correct to point out that emotions have +/- valence, but they are surprisingly silent about what these might be. From an evolutionary perspective, there are categories of need (nurture, including food and attachment), sexual mates, and especially the need to be part of the group because the group was the key to individual survival. The so-called negative emotions are termed such because they involve dislike in various forms. (4) These values – what we need, and those threats and harm that we want to push away – are the basis for ER. ER is neither random nor emotion free. Cool reason’s role does not do away with emotion. Immediate impulses conflict with our broader- or longer-term interests and some of these conflict with each other. Conflict is over emotion-laden values, and mind’s regulatory role is to promote the higher values over the lower values (this too has been said: The only thing that regulates emotion is another, higher-value, emotion). (5)
The authors comments about “learned emotion” suggest that emotions vary, but this conflates emotional form and emotional content. The need for group-security and the fear of threat and harm, are fixed. They are part of our species heritage. How or what fills these forms with content varies over time. In the old days, our groups were small, and kin-related. Today they are broadened to include affiliated subgroups as well as the nation. The need for a group is invariant. Which group fulfills that need is not. Or, in the old days, we feared the jungle tiger. Today, we fear getting hit by another car. We learn what to fear but fear itself is the same emotion it always has been.
As a last point, it is likely that our emotional makeup – the underlying emotional impulses that govern us – vary by individual and that such variation is consistent with Darwinian theory. Some are more social than others. Others are needier. Some are more pathological than others, etc. Though clearly enhanced and controlled by culture, a good part of this is likely the inborn disposition that we see in children shortly after birth.
(1) The authors note the lack of clarity that goes with the terminology used to describe the affective life). It is extensive, hence, their stipulated definition.
(2) Though they distinguish emotion from feeling, the title of their book captures the brain’s central role: consciousness is awareness of bodily reaction, and consciousness allows ER (emotion regulation) to occur. For the authors, William James is the modern baseline for the study of emotion. By their definition, James was theorizing about feeling, which is a consciousness about bodily reaction (emotions), not emotions per se, which are the body’s reaction. James reflected the traditional bias against the positive role of emotion in human life. By focusing on feelings, James asserts bodily control over the troublesome aspects bodily phenomena. ‘“If we voluntarily alter the body,” James writes, ‘we should be able to alter our feelings: We whistle to keep up courage.’ It is mind control over ‘undesirable emotional tendencies.’ We ‘put on a happy face.’”
(3) Spinoza says all particular emotions are derivations of desire, joy and sadness. Schopenhauer’s pain, I'd argue, comes with a full-suite of specific needs, and fears and threats. It’s a little more complex than this, but not much, and the idea of lumping like this makes a good deal of sense.
(4) I’d argue that the characterization of fear and anger as negative emotions misleads. Both are positive emotions because they protect the self’s interest. They push away stimuli that is unwanted in the self’s space. The latter point is particularly relevant today because of the heavy bias against anger in any form (to be frowned upon as the lack of emotional control, etc.), a viewpoint that extends in the minds of many to foreign relations too.
(5) There are plenty of ways reason can err in doing this – focusing on the wrong behavior, or subscribing to false or misleading values for what is really going on. But “ignorance” is secondary to motivation. Smartness means nothing if the motivation is to serve the self only. Kant’s dictate to respect the ends of others is meaningless unless the self is motivated to do so.
The problem begins with their stipulated definition of emotion: Emotions are immediate impulses that respond to triggering stimuli. (1) The affective aspects beyond the here and now are moods or something other than emotion. From this, the authors are led to their several references to “hot” emotions that tend to get us into problems and “cool” reason that comes to the rescue with various forms of “emotional regulation” (referred to as ER). “Mind,” in other words, largely takes control, though the authors say that our affective sides are involved, somehow, nevertheless. (2)
Though understandable given their scientific bent, the authors don’t draw from certain philosophical insights that might help to reframe our understanding of emotional life. Hume’s well-known statement that mind serves the passions flips the Western bias against emotion around. In other words, Plato’s charioteer only thinks it is in charge. For Schopenhauer, pain is emotion. We go out into the world to satisfy need and we react to stimuli to defend ourselves as needing beings. Pain is emotion. Pain is Spinoza’s “desire” (for and against). Where there’s success, there’s Spinoza’s pleasure. When there’s failure, there is Spinoza’s sadness, which is pain that either prompts us to act or react anew or to fester inside (as Freud’s energy model stresses) only to re-emerge as psychiatric disorder.
Right now, studies on human affective life is a hodgepodge of this and that. There’s a lot of swirling around within the braincase, without much attention given to the ultimate sources of our movement. These philosophical treatments – Hume, Schopenhauer, Spinoza – may be wrong in their particulars (3), but they generally help to present emotion studies in a more understandable and comprehensive picture of who we are. We survive by moving toward and against. We’re purposeful, striving, biological beings. We seek out objects or others because we need them. We react to negative triggers because they mean something to us. Relevant objects (+/-) have valence, and valence is what moves us in directed ways. Rather than getting wrapped around the axel with various terms relating to our affective life, maybe we should just stick with emotion (to move, move out), which covers this toward-against movement on behalf of survival and bodily well-being.
For most animal life, movement is of the automatic, here and now variety, which ties pain (needs, threats-harm), which is the “reason” (motive force) for action and reacting, with a relevant object (determined by a cognitive function), and behavior that links both together. Humans still have these animalistic tendencies, but we also have consciousness, though I don’t think that the authors’ discussion of LeDoux covers what I thought was his central point about its role. When walking along the trail and we see a snake-like figure, we jump back. A fraction of a second later, consciousness kicks in and tells us that it was a stick that looked like a snake. Consciousness supplements or enhances our instinctive tendencies and this helps to correct, regulate behavior. Consciousness provides more information that we can act on or react to, but emotion is primary. It is still there. Consciousness doesn’t replace fear, but provides an overlay that tells the body whether the fear is warranted. LeDoux deals with fear, but he also suggests that this model of “fear” and “consciousness” might apply to other emotions as well. And some reflections on our own day-to-day behavior across the board suggests that LeDoux may be onto something with this two-step (initial reaction versus correction or refinement).
The authors are correct to point out that emotions have +/- valence, but they are surprisingly silent about what these might be. From an evolutionary perspective, there are categories of need (nurture, including food and attachment), sexual mates, and especially the need to be part of the group because the group was the key to individual survival. The so-called negative emotions are termed such because they involve dislike in various forms. (4) These values – what we need, and those threats and harm that we want to push away – are the basis for ER. ER is neither random nor emotion free. Cool reason’s role does not do away with emotion. Immediate impulses conflict with our broader- or longer-term interests and some of these conflict with each other. Conflict is over emotion-laden values, and mind’s regulatory role is to promote the higher values over the lower values (this too has been said: The only thing that regulates emotion is another, higher-value, emotion). (5)
The authors comments about “learned emotion” suggest that emotions vary, but this conflates emotional form and emotional content. The need for group-security and the fear of threat and harm, are fixed. They are part of our species heritage. How or what fills these forms with content varies over time. In the old days, our groups were small, and kin-related. Today they are broadened to include affiliated subgroups as well as the nation. The need for a group is invariant. Which group fulfills that need is not. Or, in the old days, we feared the jungle tiger. Today, we fear getting hit by another car. We learn what to fear but fear itself is the same emotion it always has been.
As a last point, it is likely that our emotional makeup – the underlying emotional impulses that govern us – vary by individual and that such variation is consistent with Darwinian theory. Some are more social than others. Others are needier. Some are more pathological than others, etc. Though clearly enhanced and controlled by culture, a good part of this is likely the inborn disposition that we see in children shortly after birth.
(1) The authors note the lack of clarity that goes with the terminology used to describe the affective life). It is extensive, hence, their stipulated definition.
(2) Though they distinguish emotion from feeling, the title of their book captures the brain’s central role: consciousness is awareness of bodily reaction, and consciousness allows ER (emotion regulation) to occur. For the authors, William James is the modern baseline for the study of emotion. By their definition, James was theorizing about feeling, which is a consciousness about bodily reaction (emotions), not emotions per se, which are the body’s reaction. James reflected the traditional bias against the positive role of emotion in human life. By focusing on feelings, James asserts bodily control over the troublesome aspects bodily phenomena. ‘“If we voluntarily alter the body,” James writes, ‘we should be able to alter our feelings: We whistle to keep up courage.’ It is mind control over ‘undesirable emotional tendencies.’ We ‘put on a happy face.’”
(3) Spinoza says all particular emotions are derivations of desire, joy and sadness. Schopenhauer’s pain, I'd argue, comes with a full-suite of specific needs, and fears and threats. It’s a little more complex than this, but not much, and the idea of lumping like this makes a good deal of sense.
(4) I’d argue that the characterization of fear and anger as negative emotions misleads. Both are positive emotions because they protect the self’s interest. They push away stimuli that is unwanted in the self’s space. The latter point is particularly relevant today because of the heavy bias against anger in any form (to be frowned upon as the lack of emotional control, etc.), a viewpoint that extends in the minds of many to foreign relations too.
(5) There are plenty of ways reason can err in doing this – focusing on the wrong behavior, or subscribing to false or misleading values for what is really going on. But “ignorance” is secondary to motivation. Smartness means nothing if the motivation is to serve the self only. Kant’s dictate to respect the ends of others is meaningless unless the self is motivated to do so.
August 10, 2017
This book reads like what I assume it was -- a collection of college lectures introducing students to the workings of the brain, especially the emotions. It has the great advantages of being clear, intelligent, and fast-moving. If you're looking for a way to understand the emotional brain better, this book is a good bet.
April 15, 2024
It's okay, my main misgiving is that it uses too many verbal descriptions of brain structures without sufficient visual illustrations, the result is that the authors may as well be saying 'this bit of the brain'. The brain is the most complicated organ in the body and necessarily needs to be adequately described in visual terms if it's going to be given a competent description. This book just doesn't do this properly. Some of it is okay, though I wouldn't recommend the book.
December 13, 2017
Nice review of current and past research on emotions. Does a good job of explaining how emotions and cognition are intertwined, not opposed.
November 27, 2019
!!If you’re a Christian, read this review!!
I went to Barnes and Noble a week ago and, after browsing, purchased this book. On my way out of the store, I bumped into my pastor Michael and he asked what I got. He told me when he saw the book that he had BAD spiritual feelings ! about the book. I became nervous but I spent the money so I thought I should at least give it a try!! I WISH I had listened to the good lord’s pastor. They truly are sent to protect us from EVIL! This book was SO ANTI CHRISTIAN! ! ! From page ONE the authors MOCK our lord Jesus!!!!
LESSON LEARNED: trust !!! your pastor.
I went to Barnes and Noble a week ago and, after browsing, purchased this book. On my way out of the store, I bumped into my pastor Michael and he asked what I got. He told me when he saw the book that he had BAD spiritual feelings ! about the book. I became nervous but I spent the money so I thought I should at least give it a try!! I WISH I had listened to the good lord’s pastor. They truly are sent to protect us from EVIL! This book was SO ANTI CHRISTIAN! ! ! From page ONE the authors MOCK our lord Jesus!!!!
LESSON LEARNED: trust !!! your pastor.
November 2, 2025
đọc khùm đọc điêng cuối cùng cũng xong :))))
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews