The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life

by Joseph E. LeDoux

The Emotional Brain investigates the origins of human emotions and explains that many exist as part of complex neural systems that evolved to enable us to survive.

Genres: Psychology, Neuroscience, Science, Nonfiction, Brain, Self Help, Biology

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Tran · Rating 3 out of 5]

"You're reading that for *fun*?" "Yup."

Okay so it wasn't really "fun", reading this book, and god knows it took me nearly the entire summer to finish it, but here are some crazy tidbits about our emotional brain:

You know how sometimes you wished you could will yourself to feel a certain way about a certain situation/person/thing? Ya know, adopt an emotionally "mature" perspective on it? But instead you feel kinda angry/bitter/jealous/scared/sad/etc. about the whole fucking thing? Well here's why (in a grossly reductive, I'm-too-lazy-to-write-a-10-page-essay-about-this-shit-kinda-way): the amygdala. You see, that part of the brain mediates emotional arousal, and its pathways to (and subsequent influence on) the cortex (where higher cognitive functions -- e.g. thinking -- occur) are far stronger than the other way around. That explains why it's much easier for emotions to grip your conscious thoughts & behavior than vice versa. (I think.)

Okay that was essentially one tidbit, but I'm tired now and this ain't Amazon anyway. Read the book if you wanna know more.

[Cooper Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brief Review
A prominent researcher who focuses on the “emotional brain,” Joseph LeDoux contends that, contrary to the belief of some experts, there is no single emotional or “limbic” system in the brain, but different systems for different emotions. He also maintains that the fear system, in which he specializes, has two components that are not always in sync. There is the “lower” system, controlled by the amygdala in the midbrain, which is oriented toward survival and thus triggers flight or freeze or fight reactions based on a gross reading of sensory perceptions; this system is more potent than the “higher,” more finely discriminating cortical system, and sometimes overpowers it—which accounts for the persistent emotional ravages of such syndromes as PTSD and the phobias. This book is written for the layman as well as the specialist, and I recommend it to anyone interested in how the brain works.

Expanded Review

Joseph LeDoux is a psychologist who specializes in investigating the emotions. He is a protégé of Michael Gazzaniga, who in turn was a protégé of the late Roger Sperry, winner of the Nobel Prize for his work with split-brain patients (people with their cerebral hemispheres surgically separated).
Until fairly recently, emotions were neglected if not ignored by most academic psychologists—emotions did not fit neatly into the worldview of the behaviorists, who for many years dominated American psychology, while their successors, the cognitive psychologists, have tended to treat the emotions as just another form of cognition. LeDoux surveys this whole history of neglect.
Recently, though, there has been quite a lot of work on the emotions, and in particular, on what happens inside the brain during emotional states. LeDoux himself has focused on the emotion fear, because it is probably the easiest to study. Mostly he discusses how the brain produces fear and anxiety, and what the implications are for pathologies like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the phobias. One of the keys to the fear response is Pavlovian ("classical") conditioning, in which a "learned trigger" or conditioned stimulus (CS—for example, the sound of a bell), comes (through association) to produce the same fear reaction as does a "natural trigger" or unconditioned stimulus (US—for example, an electric shock).
Based on his own work and a thorough knowledge of recent studies by other investigators, LeDoux draws the following major conclusions:

*Multiple Systems—Contrary to earlier views, different emotions appear to have different systems in the brain. Fear has one system, rage another and sex still another. There is no "limbic system" that processes all emotions.

*Evolutionary Advantages—Each emotional system has evolved to confer specific advantages related to personal survival (e.g., fear) and perpetuation of the species (e.g., sex).

*Two Systems for Fear—There are two systems that control the human fear response: the "lower" system, controlled by the amygdala, a small almond-shaped structure in the midbrain, and the "higher" system, controlled by the lateral medial area of the prefrontal cortex (this area controls "working memory"—what used to be called "short-term memory").

*Lower System Built for Speed—The lower system is more primitive than the higher, and it evolved first. It is common to all mammals and to some lower orders as well. It has one purpose: to allow the person to mobilize her resources and act quickly at any sign of danger. Sensory stimuli are routed to the amygdala, which instantly queries the longterm memory in the neighboring hippocampus ("Do these stimuli correspond with anything dangerous?"); if there is danger, the amygdala releases signals to systems that will mobilize the body to flee (if it has time) or to "freeze" (if it can't flee) or to fight (as a last resort). Some major points about this system: 1) some of its responses are apparently inherited rather than learned—for example, laboratory rats will "freeze" when encountering a snake even if they've never before seen one (or, presumably, read about one); 2) because it is vital to survival, this system can learn in "one trial"—a memory can be indelibly imprinted in the hippocampus based on just one frightening experience, so the system is highly susceptible to Pavlovian conditioning; 3) it is a "quick-and-dirty" system, that does not make fine discriminations among sensory stimuli—so it may later respond not only to the original danger stimulus but also to other, similar stimuli, and also to conditioned stimuli (stimuli that happened to be present along with the dangerous stimulus—for example, a honking horn during a mugging); and 4) its processes are completely unconscious, which allows us to react to dangerous situations before we "know" (consciously) about them—thus we react before we have to think about what’s going on (in an emergency, thinking takes too long).

*Higher System Built for Discernment—The higher system evolved more recently, and is most highly developed in the human. The system's "executive" is located in the prefrontal cortex, in the area that houses the brain's "working memory." This is the seat of consciousness, where we evaluate, compare, calculate, combine—where we do our conscious thinking. When we suddenly encounter a dangerous situation, the sensory stimuli are routed to this system, though a bit more slowly than to the lower system. The sensory stimuli are followed by perceptions of our lower system's (and therefore our body's) reaction to the situation—rapid heartbeat, quickened breathing, tensed muscles, etc. We then decide what to do based on a more comprehensive, conscious review of the situation. For example, the lower system spots a "snake" on the path, and makes the body jump back—then the higher system sees that the "snake" is actually a harmless stick, and tries to turn off the alarm and calm the body down. Points about the higher system: 1) it involves consciousness and can therefore evaluate context—the overall situation; 2) it reacts more slowly than the lower system; 3) it discriminates much more finely than the lower system; and 4) it is less powerful than the lower system (there are many more circuits leading from the amygdala to the "working memory" system than vice versa).

*Serious Problem: Decoupling of the Two Systems—The lower and higher systems do not always "talk" to each other. 1) The lower system may remember things that were below the perceptual threshold of the higher system. For example, the lower system may pick up a conditioned stimulus that the higher system is not even aware of (e.g., the honking horn during the mugging), and mobilize the body's defenses for no apparent (to consciousness) reason. Also, during very stressful situations, when the hippocampus is flooded with steroids, the higher system may fail to convert working memories into long-term memories, so that a traumatic event may be forgotten by the higher system but remembered by the lower system. The higher system may know from the body's responses (racing heart, etc.) that there's something wrong, but has no idea what. It may simply experience an anxiety attack. 2) The higher system may remember a traumatic event (for example, a bad fall), but it may also know that it is powerless to calm down the lower system's overreaction to all heights (acrophobia). This usually leads to avoidance behavior—the higher system habitually steers the person away from high places.

*Anxiety Disorders Caused by Decoupling—LeDoux makes the case that the anxiety disorders—post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), phobias, anxiety attacks, generalized ("free-floating") anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)—are caused by the decoupling discussed in the last paragraph, and by the consequent inability of the higher system to keep the lower system under control. The lower system hears a car backfire—this turns on a Vietnam combat memory—DANGER!—and mobilizes the body to flee, freeze or fight. The higher system remembers the Vietnam incident but can't subdue the lower system, which persists for a long time in flooding the body with danger signals. Alternatively, the lower system sees a flashbulb pop and mobilizes the body to flee, freeze or fight, but this time the higher system is unaware of the connection between the flashbulb and Vietnam—it knows only that the body and mind are beset by an all-out anxiety attack. So from the standpoint of the human being, the lower system has an upside and a downside: the upside is that it allows us to react very quickly to real dangers and to remember those dangers forever; the downside is that it tends to react too readily to similar and conditioned stimuli, to generalize to other related stimuli, to resist relearning, to fail to distinguish between the situation "back then" and the situation now—and of course it never forgets (even if the memory is "extinguished," it can be retriggered at any time by stress, even stress totally unrelated to the original trauma: for example, acrophobia “irrationally” revived by the death of a beloved grandparent).

This is an excellent book for anyone who wants to know how the brain and emotions work, or who's particularly interested in the anxiety disorders. There may be more history than you care for (the book aims at neuroscientists as well as laypeople), but the presentation is simple, with many good examples and some very useful diagrams.

Key concepts and brain areas:

Amygdala
Conditioned Response (CR)—e.g., salivation
Conditioned Stimulus (CS)—e.g., bell
Frontal Cortex—the location of the “higher” brain
Hippocampus—brain area that consolidates long-term memory
Lateral Medial Prefrontal Cortex—seat of the brain’s “executive” and “working memory”
Learned Trigger—e.g., bell
Natural Trigger—e.g., food
Unconditioned Response—e.g., salivation
Unconditioned Stimulus (US)—e.g., food

[shweta agarwal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was by no means an easy read for a lay person like me, though I am sure Ledoux has oversimplified it for a more general read. I don't know how much of it will I retain, I doubt much but a big takeaway was to realize how complicated our brain is and how much of the processes are happening unconsciously. Hence, introspective analysis of every emotion and feeling is almost impossible. It's easier probably to read others than judge oneself. It's probably ok if we cannot understand our emotions and feelings or attribute them to unrelated reasons as our mind is always racing towards finding causes.

I was hoping to find out more about the emotional uniqueness of us all. How much of it is genetic and how much is attributable to upbringing and external environment. Unfortunately this book is more about the physiology and anatomy of brain. I did like reading about certain systems and functions of brain. It's an interesting insight in to how fear conditioning works and how even a tiny bit of malfunction can lead to various anxiety disorders. The permanence of such conditioning which could be reignited by stress was scary to know. The work our brain has to do in order to manifest emotions consciously in to feelings is extremely complicated. The question regarding whether we are blessed to have such sophisticated brain or is it our bane to be conscious is a question that is very difficult to answer.

[J.D. Steens · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just took (2026) another look at this book. Rather than edit my earlier review, what follows is a second review.

LeDoux provides an excellent history on the study of emotions, broken down generally between those who view them as biologically based responses to stimuli, and those who see them as socially constructed. A deeper backdrop is the division, since the days of Greek philosophy, between emotions and reason, with the former being bad and in need of control by the latter.

In looking at this history, LeDoux is clear: There’s no agreement on what an emotion is. Given the centrality of emotions in our life, this is surprising. Despite claims of certainty, the state of our philosophical and scientific understanding on this topic is poor. To his credit, LeDoux is straight up about all of this. Though old now (1994), this is a much better starting point on the topic than the oft-referred to Lisa Feldman Barrett book that is critical of innate emotions and treats them, authoritatively, as socially constructed phenomena.

This book is a case study in fear, which LeDoux uses to bridge the emotions versus mind gap. When we perceive a shadowy snake-like figure on the trail, we leap back. This reflexive startle effect provides quick protection to danger, but it is followed by a conscious (mental) overlay that imports additional information that indicates that the shadow is a twig not a snake.

LeDoux suggests this applies to other emotions as well, and this twin way of responding gives us - from, say, primates on - important survival advantages. This is about the “fast” and “slow” response that Kahneman wrote about. The fast is autonomic. It responds quickly to something perceived as dangerous. The slow, conscious response tells us more about the nature of the object and how best to respond to it. This way, we move from reflexively-driven beings to those who can act with willful intent. From experience, we build a vast body of knowledge about what in the environment is good and what is bad and from that we can project the consequences of our behavior in the environment in an “if-then” way.

LeDoux’s central point is that the brain does an appraisal of the object vis-a-vis what the body needs or doesn’t want. The sequence runs as follows: The object - its perception - a +/- appraisal of the object - and then the behavior that engages the object. This illustrates how the brain and emotions work together (hence, the book’s title, “The Emotional Brain”). A simple mental perception of an object (say a car) means nothing for the self or organism without an interpretation of its good or bad relevance (say, the car crossing the center line moving toward us) relative to the self’s (or organism’s) interest. The brain conducts this interpretation and I think LeDoux is saying that this is done for the most part non-consciously, which is another way that we are tied to our animal past.* A conscious appraisal is just the tip of the iceberg, so to say.

From that central point flows a couple of other implications. We typically view love and hate as emotions. There is a clear connection between the two, but these are not emotions per se, but rather they are the +/- appraisals of the objects that lead to the release of emotion - in this case, fear and fear-based behavior.

When you parse love-hate, you can see an intensity scale is involved that indicates the degree of positive or negative reaction to the object in question.** At the low end of the scale, there’s either a neutral evaluation (not relevant) or an apathetic response (object is not really a threat or harm). Then there are the very general appraisal terms of like/dislike followed by love/hate. At the higher end, there are passions on the one hand and loathing on the other.

This connection of the brain’s appraisal to the body’s interest illustrates another LeDoux point. The primary driver behind behavior is emotion (need that prompts offensive behavior, and fear and anger that prompts defensive behavior). Emotion, in other words, houses value (the self’s interest). This makes, LeDoux says, cognitive control over emotion less powerful than emotion controlling the mind, thus bolstering scientifically I suppose, Hume’s observation that reason is and ought to serve the passions.

Regarding the innate versus social construction (culture defines what is an emotion), LeDoux makes a helpful distinction between innate triggers and learned triggers, and perhaps the latter is meant by social construction. With experience we come to learn what objects in our surroundings are dangerous and what objects are not. In the old days, predators are to be feared. These days, animal predators are few ( interestingly, LeDoux refers to “social predators”), we fear cars instead of animals. But, importantly, while the object of fear is variable, the emotion of fear is invariant. It is a defending emotion that is activated by a harmful or threatening object. With emotions being defined these days as primary “responses” to the triggering objects, and with those objects varying across space and time (the environment changes), then by definition, emotions will always be variable. This is how definitions wrongly frame how we think about emotions. The distinction between an active and inactive state contributes to the definition problem with emotion. For those who see emotion as an active response to a stimuli, emotions will be variable, depending on the variable stimuli. Hence, the social construction argument. But if emotions are seen in their inactive as well as active states, then emotions can be seen as invariant, and their expression as variable as they are activated by variable stimuli.

Regarding social construction, LeDoux refers to Paul Ekman’s attempt to skirt what is innate versus what is “constructed.” For Ekman, emotions per se, are innate, but their “display rules” - how they are manifested across time and space are variable. Unfortunately, LeDoux does not flesh this out. I suppose intuitively it makes some sense. In some cultures, it is ok to express what’s inside whereas in other cultures, it’s best to bury them. In some cultures, it’s ok to express sexuality more or less explicitly whereas in others, subtlety is required. These are different manifestations of emotions (anger-excitement, sexuality and desire) that differ depending on what the prevailing cultural norms are and the pressure to conform to them. This is an area that I need to sort through more.

The main problem I have with LeDoux is that emotions for him are “responses” to external triggers. This is a passive view of the self (perhaps inherited from the Utilitarians, and before that, Newtonian physics). We wait until the +/- object presents itself, and then we respond to it. What is missing is why the self, or the organism, responds to the object at all and to accurately portray that the motive force has to come from within the self: We want the positive objects; we don’t want the negative ones.

With threats, harms and annoyances, it’s easy to see that we respond (react to) them. This is why the emotion of fear is used to illustrate LeDoux’s understanding of emotions. But in doing so, he doesn’t do justice to the self as an active, seeking being, moved by need. (This is somewhat akin to Maslow’s view). This part of LeDoux’s theory is missing, though here and there he can’t help but bump into it when he says, for example, that, in addition to emotions for defending, we have emotions for love, finding food and mates, and caring for offspring. As Schopenhauer observed, need is pain, and pain is why we act in the world as well as react to it. Isn’t it time to reconceptualize needs as emotions? As with responses to negative objects, need prompts us to act in the world. In fact, it could be argued that the primary emotional drivers are need, and the defensive reactions (called by LeDoux and others “emotions”), are “merely” those bodily movements that protect our ability to seek what we need from the world - nurture and group life and all that is encompassed by those categories of activity, and sexual mates.

As another issue, and In looking at the brain scientifically, LeDoux’s methodology leads him to conclude that there is no general emotional system. There are, rather, different brain systems at work for different emotions. “The brain is a collection of systems, each with a different function.”

Seeing it this way suggests that there’s no such thing as a collective self, but this is at odds with evolutionary theory (at least Dawkins’ version) that says that the body is a vehicle for replication. While individual systems can be conceptually separated, each contributes for the collective well-being of the whole. Emotions, thus, move the self to seek what is needed to survive and reproduce, and emotions move the self to defend against what would impede what the self has or needs to have to survive and reproduce. Early on, LeDoux acknowledges this biological role for emotions when he writes, as a definition of emotion, that, “The basic building blocks of emotion are neural systems that mediate behavioral interactions with the environment, particularly behaviors that take care of fundamental problems of survival.” This definition works as long as it’s understood that emotions are what move the self, as with all organisms, to seek what is needed to survive and to defend against threats or harm to the body.

As a final note, LeDoux’s theory of emotions, such as it is, can be conceptualized as a circuit of energy. At the beginning end of behavior lies need to seek and the need to defend vis-a-vis objects that are appraised as relevant in a positive or negative way. When relevant, latent energy activates need, the offensive emotion (Spinoza’s desire) and fear-anger, defensive emotions leading to appropriate behavior vis-a-vis the self’s interest. When behavior is successful, energy becomes quiescent; when there is failure, energy remains active, either to fester or to persist in ways to get what the self needs, or to defend against hostile objects/others.

*The “why” component of behavior is shared with all of life. We, the self and the organism, are driven by the need for survival and well-being, and by the need to defend the body’s interest. Collectively, this is the self’s (or the organism’s) interest.

**The variation in intensity applies both to the nature of the object (how desirable it is or how harmful or threatening it is) and to the internal makeup of the self, reflecting Darwinian deviation (some more prone to fear than others). This suggests that there’s some innate basis for personality or character differences among individuals. While LeDoux doesn’t address this point directly, he does discuss an internal factor involved in how we react to triggers when he mentions a decoupling of the amygdala (source of fear) from cortical interpretation (appraisal). We need (emotional) arousal he acknowledges, but too much or too little is a bad thing for the body’s welfare. Whether this decoupling for fear is a genetic predisposition for phobias of various sorts LeDoux doesn’t say.


****

2012 Review: This is a good book, although some of the more technical descriptions were challenging. Whether any of this is dated, I can't say.

LeDoux argues that we make a mistake when we conceive of emotions as a distinct, unitary system, as we more or less implicitly do when we contrast emotions with cognition and reason. "Emotions are" he writes, "...functions involved in survival. But since different emotions are involved with different survival functions - defending against danger, finding food and mates, caring for offspring, and so on - each may well involve different brain systems that evolved for different reasons. As a result, there may not be one emotional system in the brain but many."

Following up on that observation, LeDoux states that the only way to understand emotion is to study them one at a time and he spends most of this book on fear as a case study. The key observation about this emotion is that two systems, the nonconscious "emotional" amygdala and the conscious, reasoning cortex, work together and complement each other. The amygdala is immediate and fast, providing a survival value that way, but it can be wrong. The conscious part of the brain follows a fraction of a second later with supplementary information that more accurately assesses the situation and how best to respond. The "snake" may actually be a stick. Both responses, which LeDoux terms the low and high roads respectively, may be involved in other areas as well, although that might violate his caution to study on one emotion at a time. Yet, this observation about how "emotions" in general operate at least in relationship to the cognitive system does seem to match up with Kaheman's System 1 and System 2 processes, and with much of what we ourselves can self-observe in our lives.

LeDoux generally defines emotions as a response to an arousing stimulus. This makes it easy for him to select fear as his case study because of the obvious response that is involved. But this begs a larger question: Why do we fear? LeDoux also writes that Aristotle saw anger as a reasonable response to an insult. Here anger responds, but what is it about "insult" that creates the response? Clearly, something deeper is going on that involves our body's energy.

LeDoux acknowledges that while "scientists have not been able to agree about what an emotion is," he thinks looking at "universal behavioral functions" is a better way of defining basic emotions and, in common with our animal heritage, he sees emotional systems revolving around "the need to obtain food and shelter," protection "from bodily harm," and precreation." Elsewhere, he refers to emotional behaviors as those associated with "fighting, feeding, sex, and social bonding" and "caring for offspring." Seen this way, the involuntary responses identified by Darwin and others become much less significant as a focus or become part of a larger notion of emotion, which is now conceptualized as survival energy that seeks from the world what is needed to survive and defends against what is not needed from that world. LeDoux states that some sort of assessment goes on when the conscious or nonconscious brain evaluates the stimulus as a threat (or as an appropriate object to seek). Assessment implies "evaluation against a standard." LeDoux does not discuss what that standard is, but it could very well be these core survival values that are embedded in our basic emotions (need states).

This view of the organism, and of ourselves, now moves the self away from the passive responder role that characterizes much of the discussion about emotion, and moves the self into an active seeker and protector of the body's core interests. We seek food, sex, love, group bonding, security. We defend against threats to these values. The energy that is built into these behaviors is primariy the low road, System 1 stuff, where we act or react largely without conscious thought, and some involve the "flush" of emotions that we typically associate with emotions. In short, we act on and react to the world in the way we do because the body cares, and we care because these ways of acting and reacting to the world have enabled us - our predecessor bodies - to survive over the eons.

[Stephie Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book discusses how emotions are produced in the brain, and what their functions are. How do they help us as we travel through life. The author, Joseph LeDoux, is a brain scientist, who has extensively study the fear response in animals. He believes from his own work, and those of others, that the emotion of fear is produced in the same way in human beings. Humans may have an extra component; this would be we feel fear, which is partly a cognitive affair, which he believes takes language and self-consciousness, but still does not rule out the possibility of higher mammals, such as apes, dolphins, and perhaps even some birds having some form of feelings also. The emotion of fear involves the amygdala and connections to other parts of the brain, including the cortex and the brain stem. He covers the debate whether or not we and other animals have innate fears of certain objects, such as snakes and heights. On his way through the book he explains many parts and connections the brain is composed of. The book also contains some readable endnotes of interest, but unless you have a Kindle version, which I did not, it is kind of a nuisance reading them.

I have some comments on specific pieces of the text. The page numbers for the text are in brackets []. An “@” symbol indicates were a comment was made, but was not specifically connect to the text, but was thought about during that part of the book. Pagination is from Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, copyrighted in 1996.

[31] “We do not consciously plan the grammatical structure of the sentences we utter.” This lends support to seeing that language production is separated from thought in the brain; in other words, we do not think in language. It is processed in separated areas in the brain.

[34] “. . . Ulric Neisser states that the field [cognitive science] is not about the dynamic factors (like emotions) that motivate behavior.” When emotions become conscious feelings occur, and the feelings that are responsible for carrying through a conscious decision is what I think is known (or should be) as free will.

[35] “It is now believed that thinking does not normally involve the pure reasoned rules of logic.” I feel that most people that say they think logically really do not as can be deduced from the following: “He [Philip Johnson-Laird] found that quite often people draw illogically valid conclusions.” Moreover, “People are rational . .. they just don’t achieve their their rationality by following formal laws of logic.” This is another bit indicating that most people that say that they think logically, actually do not. Another thing it indicates is a possible role of feelings as an intimate link with language. [39] One more quote of support here; “Minds have thoughts as well as emotions and the study of either without the other will never be fully satisfying.” (I italicize here because of the importance of these two mental phenomena). I think it is fools that ignores their feelings. It is actually impossible to have emotions whether conscious or not without them affecting thoughts.

[41] In a discussion on whether or not a computer could be programmed to be consciousness, LeDoux states: “However, even if a computer could be programmed to be conscious, it could not be programmed to have an emotion, as a computer does not have the right composition, which comes not from the clever assembly of human artifacts, but from eons of biological evolution.” The same defect could be said about consciousness which must have taken eons to have evolved too. Also, they already have programs that can mimic evolution for some shapes that look somewhat biological. Anyway, if one thing could be evolved on a computer, why could not both consciousness and feelings be programmable.

[44-5] By William James’ account, “. . . we do not tremble because we are afraid or cry because we feel sad; we are afraid because we tremble and sad because we cry.” This cannot be right; one could possibly feel fear without trembling, and I know you can be sad without crying.

[57] “And the inability of subjects in the subliminal perceptions experiments to verbally identify the secret stimuli was due, not to a failure to consciously perceive the stimuli, but to imperfections of verbal processes when it comes to accurately characterizing perceptual experiences.” Another piece of evidence that we do not think in language. And here is another piece [71]: “And we will not likely begin to fully understand the workings of human {unconsciousness} processes until we turn away from the use of verbal stimuli and verbal reports.” I also think this is why strong AI has not yet arrived; it uses language, and since if we do not think in language, as I claim, it is unlikely to be a way of achieving success in strong AI.

[@240] If the hippocampus is needed for conscious recall, does this not open the door to some kind of consciousness for other animals that have one; this would make a much large membership in the consciousness group and probably some ability to feel emotions, but not like human beings, whose language ability allows for verbal expression, and hence a richer level of feelings. And, Antonio Damasio’s work also widens the membership criteria to consciousness.

[300] He claims that consciousness in other human beings is “completely justified philosophically . . .” Nothing is completely justified in philosophy, not even logic, if included, because of the different types of logics, or the use of a different set of axioms or rules to manipulate them.

[301] “Although the exact nature of the brain specialization involved in making language possible is not fully understood, something changed with the evolution of the human brain to make language happen. Not surprisingly, the development of language has often been said to be the key to human consciousness.” LeDoux’s claims that the ability to feel emotions limits the number of species who have self-consciousness. I would agree with this when it means the ability to recognized or verbalized feelings. But, I think the circle for some form of consciousness probably in most mammals, and maybe some birds) gives these animals some sense of feelings.

Overall, while the book did have its good points, I was disappointed with it. I did not care for his diagrams. Not for the diagrams themselves, but the captions, which basically repeated exactly what was in the text. And, he basically focused on fear (his research area), then attempted to expand it to more complex emotions. Feelings were given only a chapter and he discounted the ability of most animals to have them of which I disagree.

I suppose I could recommend the book for those interested in emotions, but not so much feelings. However, I feel there are better books out there, such as the works of Antonio Damasio.

[Petter Wolff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good overview of an integrated view of emotions, (emotive) consciousness and underlying neurophysiological functions. I feel it complements Damasio well. I don't know if there is any more recent writing on the subject, I'll be on the lookout for it.

Re-read jan 2018, raising to a 5. It's really well laid out and argued, and comparably easy to read. The drawings are a bit drab, though.

[Lacy Lovelace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wowza! I felt like I was reading a textbook. Definitely hard to follow at times and hard to get through.

[David Olmsted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite being over 10 years old now this book by a leading researcher in the field gives some good information on the fear generating system of the brain.

The first two chapters review the various psychological movements of the 20th century with the third chapter narrowing that down to how they dealt with emotion. By the mid 1980's (page 53) the experimental evidence was in showing that affective (emotional) reactions could take place in the absence of conscious awareness. The key figure was Robert Zajonc who first demonstrated the phenomena known as the exposure effect in which emotionally neutral things one has previously seen are preferred over novel objects. After this discovery, in another experiment, he presented pictures to people so fast that they had no conscious recollection of what they saw yet they still exhibited this exposure effect. Today we call this subliminal suggestion. Zajonc took this further. By subliminally presenting an emotionally charged picture (a smiling or frowning face) just before a normally presented emotionally neutral picture and doing this for a whole set of pictures the test subjects had a tendency to later either like or dislike the neutral images according to what emotionally charged images was associated with them (page 59). The main point here is that some unconscious brain mechanism is a work and this is what the author, Joseph LeDoux investigated from a neuroscience perspective (this exposure effect is also the main reason why we must endure advertising).

Chapter 6 gets into learning phenomena of conditioning (Pavlov's dog), especially fear conditioning in which a tone is paired with an electrical shock. This chapter finally gets into some neuroscience by describing the pathway of an auditory triggered fear conditioning. The key brain center involved in producing fear responses in all vertebrate animals turned out to be the central nucleus of the amygdala. It receives neuronal inputs direct from the auditory thalamus thus its inputs do not depend on the cerebral cortex. Electrical stimulation increases the heart rate (blood pressure increase), induced animal freezing responses, stress hormone release, and reflex potentiation (they get faster and stronger). Lesions eliminate these responses in fear conditioning experiments. Joseph LeDoux himself further refined these results by showing that the central amygdala's projection to the periaqueductal grey of the brain stem was responsible for the freezing reflex, that its projection to the lateral hypothalamus was responsible for the blood pressure rise. Others showed that its projection to the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (in the hypothalamic region) was responsible for the stress hormone release. Electrical stimulation of the amygdala in humans most often produces the conscious sensation of fear (page 172). Damage localized to the amygdala in humans is very rare but one such patient was studied by Antonio Damasio. This patient was unable to recognize a fear facial expression even though she could identify all the other major classes of facial expression (page 173).

Chapter 8 is a very good discussion mental illness emphasizing the role that unconscious fear conditioning might play. This is rather obvious for various phobias and stress disorders but this also has a role in producing anxiety and thus depression. The author suggests that panic attacks could be a fear conditioning that improperly treats the body's own autonomic fear responses as a fear producing stimulus (page 258). In learning theory this is known as the "assignment of credit" problem. This is the problem of determining which prior event should be associated with a fear event.

Chapter 9 is a discussion of consciousness that includes the concept of “Working Memory”. Working memory is a more comprehensive idea about short term memory which allows one to remember temporarily up to 7 things at a time for up to a few minutes. In the amygdala it indicates that either more neurons are recruited into the event or the neural activation in the amygdala lasts longer than would be normal. Working memory seems to be controlled by the lateral prefrontal cortex at the very front of the brain which exists only in primates (page 274) so presumably it is able to keep amygdala neurons active longer. Below the prefrontal region is the orbital cortex which seems to be responsible for evaluating an emotional stimulus in terms of longer term goals.

Overall a good and thought provoking book.

[Magdalena Wajda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would not have reached for it if I did not have due to work. And it turned out to be fascinating.

[Karl · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the few occasions I could not bear a full read through. I usually like neuro studies. The information has value. I just dont care. Moving on. 70% read through.

[Joe Silber · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Emotional Brain" was surprisingly tough to get through; I found it a bit of a slog. Ledoux was admittedly trying to walk a line: stay accessible and layman-friendly while not "dumbing-down the science." As to whether or not he succeeded, your mileage may vary. First of all, be aware that Ledoux does not get much into the "experience" of emotions per se; this book is focused on the underlying brain processes that cause them. Ledoux doesn't get too deep into the biochemistry of things (he sprinkles in a bit here and there, but nothing that a scientifically literate person can't follow) but brain anatomy plays a very significant role, and keeping straight some of the different parts of the brain was a challenge for me at times, particularly later in the book as Ledoux describes complex feedback loops.

For a book about emotions, I found it to be a very dry, cerebral read, particularly the chapters surveying the history of the topic. Ledoux was frustratingly inconsistent in his ability to explain concepts clearly. Sometimes he did so in straightforward language and I would perk up and follow easily. Other times, I would have to reread a paragraph two or three times to follow what he was saying. I never doubted that Ledoux knew what he was talking about; the book is VERY extensively footnoted with references, and Ledoux was very careful to qualify how certain he was about any speculative statements. The book was published in 1998, so it is now 17 years old. It's certainly possible that some of the material is outdated by more recent research. However, as far as I know, there aren't a lot of books on the neurobiology of emotions (Antonio Damasio is another big researcher in the field who has written some books, but that's about it, I think), so it's probably still worth reading.

Getting past the style of the book, there is some very good technical content. Ledoux lays out his case that emotions are, essentially, the conscious awareness of specific underlying unconscious processes, that occur in certain circumstances. The unconscious processes that cause emotions are ones that tend to promote the survival of the organism and/or species. In the process of laying out his argument, Ledoux teaches the reader about how things like sensory processing, learning, memory, attention/consciousness and other tasks work at a biological level in the brain. I'm familiar with many of these concepts from a psychology perspective, but learning the more specific biological mechanisms was new and interesting to me.

Ledoux's research work focuses on fear, arguably the easiest emotion to study (and the easiest to relate to survival of the organism!). Therefore, in the book, he uses fear as an example/template/test case to explain emotions. He also discusses fear disorders - phobias and anxieties. Discussions of other emotions (joy, disgust, anger, etc) are minimal. The overt focus on fear was my main complaint about the knowledge content of the book. On the other hand, if he covered all the emotions, the book would be 900 pages long and I'd never have finished it.

So should you read this book? I read it because the general topic of brain science and psychology interests me and I'm slowly working on expanding my knowledge in the area, and this book definitely helped. However, it's more a book that I'm glad to have read, rather than one I enjoyed reading. If you're willing to slog through a dense read, I can just about guarantee you'll learn something.

[Shashwat Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're an interested in learning how emotions work and their neurobiological background, read this book.

This is a science heavy and technical book. I'd recommend you read Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence first before tackling this book. However, this books gives a very indepth look into why and how emotions occur based on the latest research. The author gives a balanced overview, and you are aware that the whole field of research into emotions is still quite new and there is a lot we don't understand.

According to the author and based on research, emotions are the byproduct of certain neural systems that accomplish certain goals are purposes. There is no "one" emotional system, but rather separate systems. The author mainly goes in depth into the fear system and the various fear and anxiety related disorders. This system has a lot of research into it, so we have an accurate idea of how it works.

Essentially, emotions occur when these systems work in an animal(us) that have conscious awareness and are only a part of a larger systematic reaction. For example, during fear your body goes through a multitude of physical reactions including increased sweating, adrenaline, higher heart rates, etc. You can't have the emotion of fear without the bodily responses associated with it.

These larger systematic reactions actually occur in most animals(although with various variations). The reason we feel emotions is because we have conscious awareness.

There is a huge amount of content covered in this book about emotions that can give you a much better understanding of how your brain and emotions work. Have you ever wondered why emotions tend to overwhelm us completely? This book goes into the reasons why in depth.

The book mainly focuses on fear and anxiety in terms of emotions, which are the cause of major anxiety disorders including PTSD, phobias, panic attacks, etc. He delves deep into the neuroscience of anxiety so you have a crystal clear idea of how they work.

One of the coolest things I read in this book is about how the amygdala(the part of the brain that holds strong unconscious emotional memories) matures faster than the hippocampal system(which is heavily involved in creating conscious long term memories). What that essentially means is if you had childhood trauma, even if you don't remember it all, your amygdala still remembers it which can leading to troubling anxiety disorders.

This is a very in depth book, and writing a summary of it would take forever. I highly suggest you read this book if you're interested in learning more about emotions and the brain and take notes(of which I have over 7500 words of notes from the book). Understanding is the first key to being able to utilize your brain to its maximum efficiency and this book is a great step for that.

[Chris Gard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't finish this book.

His writing style is insufferably verbose. When a topic is in its own essence profoundly complex, using over-the-top synonymies and overdrawn, over-complicated junctions of ideas, information and boastful vocabulary are just too overwhelming for the average reader.

It's unpleasant to see myself writing this review, as I do take such a liking to his approach to the mechanisms of unconscious, conscious and physiological and their interaction. His research is sound, although I do sense a fairly narrow understanding of the implications of developmental environment relative to later-life psychological and emotional dysregulation.

Joseph Ledoux is a dry, almost stoic writer who revels in verbosity without allowing for breath or for humour. Sometimes discussion of a complex topic requires presentation in a series of sentences that DON'T comprise exclusively of words exceeding 5 syllables. The fields of neurobiology, psychology and neuroscience are now strongly merged, and these collectively new ideas to science are ensconced in a generation of scientists who are receptive to openly comedic or entertaining styles of literacy. Obviously this wasn't QUITE as much the case in 1996, but comparative to a lot of "pop" psychological literature in that time, Ledoux's style is still just too much to take for any layperson with a world of distractions.

I recommend it for people who have zero problem focusing on dry, clinical literature. I strongly recommend avoiding if you have distractions in your life and a short attention span and no patience for redundant verbosity.

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe a bit dated, but thoughtful and historical enough to pull through.

His big contention’s that conscious feelings are red herrings: most emotional activity is demonstrably unconscious (though not in a Freudian way). So we should see emotions as products of several separate bodily-response systems: “the word ‘emotion’ does not refer to any thing the mind or brain really has or does”.

Getting there takes a lot of careful conceptual work, debunking old artefacts (“the limbic system”), probing the line between cognition and emotion, evolved emotional setups and enculturated expressions of them. Rather than reporting his theories as settled, he lets us in to the history, experimental setups, and argue for his theory choices. He’s well-versed in the philosophy (he cites Rorty!), is a master of fear (research), and I feel smarter coming out of it.

[A A · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

In The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (1996), neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux offers a seminal synthesis of affective neuroscience. He dismantling the Cartesian divide between reason and passion, demonstrating that emotions are evolved, survival-oriented neural mechanisms rather than non-rational disruptions to cognition.Key Theoretical Pillars1. The Dual-Road Theory of Fear (The "High Road" vs. "Low Road")LeDoux’s signature contribution is mapping the neural architecture of threat processing, identifying two distinct pathways through which sensory information reaches the amygdala:The Low Road (Thalamus $\rightarrow$ Amygdala): A direct, subcortical circuit optimized for speed. It delivers a fast, coarse representation of stimulus features, enabling immediate, evolutionary survival responses (e.g., flinching at a coiled shape on a trail) before conscious awareness occurs.The High Road (Thalamus $\rightarrow$ Sensory Cortex $\rightarrow$ Amygdala): A slower, highly detailed cortical pathway. It conducts fine-grained perceptual analysis to confirm or disconfirm the threat (e.g., recognizing the coiled shape is merely a garden hose), allowing higher cognitive regions to regulate or dampen the initial subcortical response. ┌───────────────────┐
│ Sensory Stimulus │
└─────────┬─────────┘
│
┌───────┴───────┐
▼ │
┌───────────────────┐ │
│ Thalamus │ │
└─┬───────────────┬─┘ │
│ │ │
LOW ROAD │ (Fast & Crude)│ HIGH ROAD (Slow & Detailed)
│ │ │
▼ ▼ │
┌───────────┐ ┌────────────┐ │
│ Amygdala │ │ Sensory │ │
└─────┬─────┘ │ Cortex │ │
│ └─────┬──────┘ │
│ │ │
│ ▼ │
│ ┌────────────┐ │
│ │ Hippocampus│ │
│ └─────┬──────┘ │
│ │ │
▼ ▼ │
┌─────────────────────────────────┴┐
│ Physiological & Behavioral Output │
└──────────────────────────────────┘
2. Functional Specialization over the "Limbic System" ConstructLeDoux challenges the classical concept of a unified "limbic system." He argues that treating the limbic system as a single emotional engine is functionally misleading. Instead, different emotions rely on distinct, dedicated neural networks tailored to specific evolutionary tasks:Fear operates via specific defense circuits centered around the amygdala.Other emotional states (e.g., reward, attachment, disgust) utilize distinct neural substrates rather than a monolithic emotional brain center.3. Dissociation of Memory SystemsLeDoux draws a fundamental distinction between implicit emotional memory and explicit declarative memory during stress:Implicit Emotional Memory (Amygdala-dependent): Mediates unconsciously conditioned autonomic responses and behavioral defense reactions. These traces are resistant to extinction and do not require conscious recall to trigger physiological states.Explicit/Declarative Memory (Hippocampus-dependent): Encodes the contextual details and facts of an event (e.g., where, when, and what happened). Under severe stress, elevated glucocorticoids can impair hippocampal function while hyper-activating the amygdala, explaining why traumatic experiences often produce vivid emotional conditioning alongside fragmented contextual memory.Core Conceptual InsightsFeeling vs. Defensive Circuitry: LeDoux distinguishes between defensive survival circuits (the objective neural hardware that detects and responds to threat) and conscious feelings (the subjective cognitive interpretation of those physiological states).Synaptic Plasticity as the Basis of Emotion: Emotional learning—such as fear conditioning—is mediated by long-term potentiation (LTP) within the lateral nucleus of the amygdala, establishing that emotional responses are dynamically wired through synaptic change.Evolutionary Primacy: Emotional circuits evolved not to produce subjective feelings, but to solve immediate survival challenges: fleeing predators, acquiring resources, and preserving bodily integrity.Practical ImplicationsPsychopathology & Trauma: Anxiety disorders and PTSD are framed as dysregulations of evolutionary survival circuits. In PTSD, fear conditioning via the amygdala remains potent, while cortical and hippocampal top-down inhibition fails to contextualize the threat properly.Therapeutic Modalities: Effective treatment requires interventions that target both circuits:Bottom-up approaches (extinction learning, somatic desensitization) to re-wire subcortical amygdala associations.Top-down approaches (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) to strengthen prefrontal cortical control over amygdala reactivity.Critical SynthesisThe Emotional Brain reshaped modern neuroscience by demonstrating that cognition and emotion are deeply integrated, operating along parallel and interacting neural pathways. By grounding affective states in measurable circuit dynamics, LeDoux replaced vague abstractions about emotion with an empirically rigorous model of the brain's survival architecture.

[Alex Delogu · Rating 3 out of 5]

A deep look into emotional/neural pathways. The start of the book is a good introduction to the schools of psychology and philosophy of mind and their respective domains of research. The latter half of the book goes into very detailed neurological descriptions that are beyond useful for me.

[Juozas Grigas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Generally, The Emotional Brain is a very accessible overview - for both laymen and people interested in more technical details of the topic – about origin, mechanism and function of emotion, and a very important distinction between ‘emotion’ and ‘feeling’, focusing more on the former. A proposition LeDoux makes can be generalized into something like emotion being a physiological and behavioral response to certain external (and possibly internal) stimuli. In that sense, emotion can be treated in a purely mechanistic approach, similarly to an automatic retraction of an arm away from a hot stove if it is touched. At the very beginning of the book author warns the reader that ‘emotion’ discussed in this book is going to be stripped away of its flamboyant expression in human beings, which is more accurately attributed to ‘feeling’. I can imagine a chosen direction of the book can be off-putting to some readers who expect more emphasis on the ‘feeling’ part of emotion.

Personally, I very much enjoyed a rigorous deconstruction of a very complex and primitive part of human brain. LeDoux slowly and gradually lays layers of information, starting from the most basic premises of action/reaction dichotomy and a behavioral approach to the problem and proceeding to include – one by one – other parts of the sophisticated mechanism of human emotion, concentrating on fear (since the majority of his own research focuses on this particular emotion). This careful construction makes the reading easy and concepts understandable, with the help of very simplified and easy to follow diagrams. It was fascinating to look at the problem of emotion from a strictly anatomical/physiological point of view, devoid of the air of mystery that the topic carries with itself when presented by other authors. No wonder that, as LeDoux himself admits, scientific research on emotion has been thoroughly lacking, and has only recently been picked up by neuroscientists, since it has, for a very long time, been thought of as ‘beyond the interest of science’.

Aside from my admiration for the book, some criticism is in order. Firstly, especially at the beginning chapters, LeDoux goes off to explain the historical context of research on emotion, mainly focusing on the work of the 20th century psychologists. Although I understand the importance of the origins of research on the topic, I believe a lot of ideas from the past that he explains add close to nothing to a contemporary understanding of emotion. The research carried out by psychologists in the 20th century was arguably very fascinating (e.g. the Little Albert experiment, subliminal signaling, etc.), it seems to be presented here for that reason alone – to capture a possibly fleeting attention of a reader, rather than adding anything to the general discussion. I understand that some readers might enjoy this trip through early research in psychology, but for me it served more as a distraction than anything else. Secondly, focus on fear when talking about problems of emotion eventually made me thirsty for diversity. What about other emotions? I do understand that the major part of LeDoux’s research focuses solely on fear, some extended discussion – even hypothetical in nature – would have been appreciated, even it made the book fifty or so pages longer, especially after the author tempts the reader with propositions that every emotion might have a separate circuitry in the brain. It would have been interesting to know more about a possible evolutionary advantage of having other emotions, like anger, disgust or joy and their underlying mechanism.

[Giulio Ciacchini · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very advanced text for doctors, specifically I'd say neurosurgeons, not at all divulgative: therefore not for me.
Still it is a very insightful book, however too much technical and dry for my capabilities.
I guess it can be useful for someone who is interested in understanding the evolution of science in the field of emotions and consciousness.
Also, given the year of publication, as a layman, some of the key take-home messages are a bit out of date like the way in which fear works through conditioning or the difference between working and long-term memory.
The author suggests that panic attacks could be a fear conditioning that improperly treats the body's own autonomic fear responses as a fear producing stimulus

The key brain center involved in producing fear responses in all vertebrate animals turned out to be the central nucleus of the amygdala. It receives neuronal inputs direct from the auditory thalamus thus its inputs do not depend on the cerebral cortex. Electrical stimulation increases the heart rate (blood pressure increase), induced animal freezing responses, stress hormone release, and reflex potentiation (they get faster and stronger). Lesions eliminate these responses in fear conditioning experiments. Joseph LeDoux himself further refined these results by showing that the central amygdala's projection to the periaqueductal grey of the brain stem was responsible for the freezing reflex, that its projection to the lateral hypothalamus was responsible for the blood pressure rise.

The cortex, which is our centre of consciousness and language, helps us to understand a threat and consider how we might deal with it. Thanks to the cortex we can be proactive as well as reactive. However, since it is slower to react than the more instinctual lizard brain, it is obviously handy to have both. It is interesting to note that people who are very anxious from birth tend to have a thicker cortex than others - presumably from trying to rationalize and cope with their anxiety, a form of fear.
we detect and respond to fear in the same way as all vertebrate animals. When faced with a frightening situation we freeze, our heart rate accelerates and muscles contract. Stress hormones are released into the bloodstream and reflexes are heightened. One interesting and merciful point about the fear reaction is that it is virtually impossible to feel strong fear and pain at the same time, as when we are frightened our sensitivity to pain is greatly diminished.

p.s. Once I realised how techincal the book was, I practised a lot of skimming for the sections regarding amygdala and brain operations in general.

[一般樓 · Rating 4 out of 5]

腦中有情：奧妙的理性與感性。
為什麼恐懼？：恐懼的神經歷程簡述
極好的書。在此先對書中的「恐懼」略述一二。
先抄錄書裡一段頗有總結意味的“例子”（文字略有增改），然後再做解釋：“一個人在樹林裡散步，突然間，他似乎看到一條蛇蜷曲在一段枯木的旁邊。這個視覺刺激是先由視覺神經送到大腦的視丘中處理，視丘的某部分馬上把這些還沒有處理清楚的訊息送到前腦的杏仁核去。這個快但不見得清楚仔細的直接傳導途徑，使大腦可以立刻對危險的訊號展開處理，例如僵住、心跳加速、冒冷汗等。但這個細長彎曲的東西可能只是樹枝或其他無害的東西。在同一時間，視丘也送訊息到大腦皮質（視覺皮質）去，而視丘送往大腦皮質的這個部位在處理訊息的能力上，比送往杏仁核區域的能力高（處理的比較清楚仔細）。視覺皮質在接受到訊息後，開始創造出一個詳細正確的刺激表徵（發覺那只是一段樹枝）。這個皮質的處理結果，又再送回到杏仁核。雖然皮質提供給杏仁核的是比較正確的表徵，但是它耗費的時間比較長。在緊急的時候，快速反應很有用，杏仁核所節省的時間很可能關係到生與死。所以，寧可把樹枝當作蛇而不要把蛇當作樹枝。”
我們一般會認為外部刺激進來（如視、聽覺），會是像水管一樣走著單一的神經通路，但是，前段敘述很清楚的告訴我們，信息進入人腦中，“同時”走向兩條不同的神經通路；一條路“快而馬虎”（從視丘直接到杏仁核），一條路“慢而精細”（視丘到大腦皮質再到杏仁核）。快速的路引起反射動作，讓我們在還來不及“想”的時候，身體各部分就已經先有了反應（所謂“想”，通常指大腦皮質的工作，也就是我們說的“意識”）。這些反應，從演化的觀點來看，是為了生存而設計的；例如聽到巨響，我們會馬上注意；遇熱我們會馬上縮手；危險時會分泌類固醇；疼痛的感覺會被壓抑等等。總體來說，我們身體的器官都提高能量，動員起來以應付可能的危險（心跳加速、血壓升高、毛髮豎立）。所以從研究者的角度來說，“恐懼”是一種“防禦行為”！許多動物都是靠這種自主反應生活的，但是哺乳類動物不只如此，它還額外發展了“意識”功能，這功能使它獲得更高的生存利益。
所以，“我看到蛇，因為感到害怕而急忙逃開”，這種關於情緒的平常敘述，從神經歷程來說是有點問題的。因為像“害怕”或其他屬於“意識”（大腦皮質活動）的“感覺”，在整個情緒行為當中，是後起的（就像大腦皮質在整個神經系統的演化過程中是後起的）。我們總先是有了本能反應（逃開），稍後才會“感到”（意識到）害怕。李竇透過神經傳導追蹤劑和大腦損傷實驗（當然，直接的實驗對象都是老鼠、兔子等動物），終於知道這個本能反應（防禦行為）是由杏仁核處理的。由恐懼行為的研究出發，李竇在《腦中有情》一書中，深入討論了情緒、記憶、意識間的關係，相當程度的揭開了所謂潛意識之謎，為理解人類的感性與理性做出了重要的貢獻。
上例雖然是視覺系統，但李竇其實是從聽覺系統研究起的。聽覺系統跟其他感覺系統一樣，皮質部分是最高層次的處理，它是從耳朵的聽神經感受體開始，到腦幹的耳蝸神經元，再到聽覺中腦、聽覺視丘，然後到聽覺皮質（這個訊息路線是透過一種會被神經細胞吸收的化學物質－WGA-HRP追蹤劑完成的）。李竇的大腦損傷實驗發現，破壞聽覺皮質與皮質下的聯結，對恐懼本能行為的發生沒有影響，但是如果破壞聽覺視丘或聽覺中腦就都會阻止恐懼本能反應，因此證明：“恐懼本能反應與聽覺皮質無關”。
繼續透過神經追蹤劑和大腦損傷實驗發現，聽覺刺激是從視丘走到杏仁核的側核（lateral nucleus），然後經過基底核、副基底核再到杏仁核的中央核（central nucleus）。中央核是控制情緒的主要聯結區，從中央核所送出的不同輸出，控制著不同的情緒反應表現。例如：
破壞中央灰色區（CG）會干擾僵直不動反應，但不會影響血壓反應；
破壞側下視丘（LH）則會影響血壓反應，但不會影響僵直反應；
破壞腦室旁下視丘（PVN）則會影響壓力荷爾蒙的釋放，但對僵直和血壓則都沒有影響。
由此可見整個情緒反應在神經歷程上的複雜性。
此外，由於演化上皮質是後起的，而且從現代的哺乳類看來，視丘投射到皮質的神經通路非常的精密，因此有人認為，視丘到杏仁核的直接通路是個演化的遺跡，是大腦中的盲腸。但這個想法並不正確。李竇說：“演化時不同種族生存下去的問題都是用同一個解決方式，那就是‘假如可以用就不要去修它’（if it ain’t broke don’t fix it）的大腦系統內在建構原則。”視丘到杏仁核這個通道具有的快速特點，對我們面臨突發危險很有幫助，因為它是生存必需的，所以在演化上被保留了。
了解恐懼的神經歷程有意義嗎？洪蘭教授曾提過的一段經歷可資說明。他說他父親患白內障，但基於某種傳統觀念而不願開刀，白內障阻擋訊息輸入的結果，導致他父親開始看到幻影，尤其晚上睡覺的時候，甚至還看到天花板和牆上有人在走動，令他的母親驚嚇不已。於是洪蘭把《大腦的秘密檔案》（英文版）的相關章節給他父親看，以解決他父親的迷惑。洪蘭說：“我們常說‘知識就是力量’，但是很少人了解‘知識就是力量’的意義在哪裡。當一個人不知道自己為什麼會這樣時，他心中充滿了恐懼，他會懷疑自己是不是心智失常，為什麼他看到的都跟別人不一樣，他在各方面測試自己的心智能力，每天惴惴不安，擔心自己的心智是否比昨天更退化了。但是一旦知道這是大腦在作用後，所有的疑慮一掃而空，那種如釋重負才真正是‘知識就是力量’的表現。只有知道原因才能真正免除恐懼擔心。”《學習樂觀‧樂觀學習》書中有一句話非常契合我心：“對生命的想法其實可以擴大或縮小我們對生命的控制力。”這裡“對生命的想法”雖然指的是樂觀或悲觀，但我想，用“知識”來代換，或許也同樣正確吧！

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve given the book 3 stars, but even after this deep dive into neuroanatomy and search for how emotions work, I’m not really sure what to think about it or how I feel about the book.

To be sure, there’s lots of neuroanatomy here. It's evident that the connection between areas of the brain and emotional output is not very well understood, but a few things are clear and edifying. I’ve tended to think of emotion as a single thing, but LeDoux says there is no single brain system dedicated to the phantom function of “emotional faculty” and emotion is not a singular process or output. “Emotions are indeed functions involved in survival, but since different emotions are involved with different survival functions—defending against danger, finding food and mates, caring for offspring, and so on—each may well involve different brain systems that evolved for different reasons. As a result, there may not be one emotional system in the brain, but many.” LeDoux also notes that, “Each emotional unit can be thought of as consisting of a set of inputs, an appraisal mechanism, and a set of outputs. The appraisal mechanism is programmed by evolution to detect certain input, or trigger stimuli, that are relevant to the function of the network.” LeDoux also believes that both consciousness and emotions are closely tied to working memory (short-term memory), but that emotions come from a more complex system of neural activity than thoughts.

We still don’t really have a handle on our emotions and if that ever happens, maybe we will then have evolved into a new and different species. The author finishes the book with this final message: “But wouldn't it be wonderful if we did understand where our emotions were taking us from moment to moment, day-to-day, and year to year, and why? If the trends toward cognitive emotional connectivity in the brain are any indication, our brains may, in fact, be moving in this direction.”

[Lauransia O. · Rating 5 out of 5]

We all often heard emotion word everywhere, anytime. And after having a year of research in emotional intelligence, what’s the point of not digging-it-for-more?

I’ve dived down to CBT (Exposure Therapy), and neuroscience to see where it could bring me. Jumping for one book to another, this is absolutely not an easy-reading one yet I enjoyed the most.

A more harmonious integration of reason and passion in the brain, a development that will allow future humans to better know their true feelings and to use them more effectively in daily life.

DAMN.

I myself couldn’t agree more with LeDoux. He has extensively studied the “FEAR” response in animals. Most of our defense mechanisms are ruled by fear because we’re still animals (with descent modification - evolution). Oh, mammals..

Fear itself is a system that detects danger and produces responses that maximize the probability of surviving a dangerous situation in the most beneficial way. Yet, by not knowing how beneficial it is will lead us to how it plays a big role in psychopathology: Anxiety, a brooding fear of what might happen. OCD, involves extreme fear of something. Phobias, fears taken to extreme. PTSD, fear is a core emotion in it. Etc.

We’ve been living with a product of evolution inside our head and not knowing a thing about it. If you often hear me saying life is all about the survival of the fittest, and call me an evil, I’m gonna slap you right away with this book.

I absolutely recommend this book for those who are interested in learning how emotions work and the underlying mechanism in it. But before, you could go with Emotional Intelligence by Goleman as the first step getting-to-know your emotion better. And rewire your brain serials to make it complete and win this life-is-hard-stop-whining-and-bitching by reading.

[Bookish Hedgehog · Rating 3 out of 5]

TL;DR; 3/5 Stars. Respectable author that has interesting things to say about emotions, and their study. However, text can be repetitive and bloated, accompanied by cheesy section names and low-quality, tired metaphors. The pictures and captions are erudite.

The book began well, discussing how emotions can be given a workable, scientific shape. By dissecting emotions into the conscious experiences, bodily reactions, and the like, we can genuinely study them well. LeDoux does a great job of demonstrating how psychology (and neuroscience) has made many errors in studying emotions — and the author makes sure to contextualise these decisions/errors (e.g., to call all emotions a form of thinking) in the-then prevalent ways of thinking, or fads, in those fields. The discussion of experiments and lesion studies is also very readable, with nice little pictures and diagrams. More often than not, the descriptions accompanying these graphics are self-explanatory and pretty cool.

However, the text of the chapters got worse as we progressed. I think many chapters in LeDoux’s book speak to the criticism of many modern-day books: they could as easily have been longform essays. By padding the text and by endlessly repeating stuff, the author managed to call this work a “book”, and burnish their CV. I particularly disliked the cheesy titles and section headings. And the metaphors got a bit out of hand (who edited this stuff?)

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was sure a chunk to get through. A lot of science, studies, and information is packed into this book making it no light read. What comes down to emotion from my take is that Amgeldela plays a key role, especially cause fear is a hard-driving force in things with humans, unlike other animals (as we assume, we have a consciousness about things that make us think about why we are feeling the stimuli that were triggered. It deals with a lot of science of different aspects of the brain, from structures of memory to learning, and where we humans have tracked different responses to stimuli, like fear and the amgeldela. And as we learned many areas of the brain don't do just one thing, It is multifaceted.

Overall a very densely scientific text on what we've come to know of the brain and consciousness and thus emotion which still eludes complete capture to define. Maybe someday in the future, we will know

[Ecem Duman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kitapta duygunun biyolojik (azar azar da psikolojik) oluşumu tarihsel olarak inceleniyor. Bu anlamda beklediğimden biraz daha farklıydı, yani ben biyolojik yapısı kadar gündelik hayatımızdaki duygunun psikolojik ve eyleme dökülen tarafının da aynı yoğunlukta işleneceğini ummuştum. Sanki duygunun textbook u gibi bir şey bu kitap kısacası. Hatta Freud, Darwin ve duygu biliminin öncü isimlerini çok iyi harmanlayıp (bilim insanlarının teorilerine kısacası nasıl hangi düşünceyle ulaştığını) size temizlikle aktarıyor. Yazarın tarihsel akışı anlaşılabilirliği örneklendirmeleri gayet yerinde ve çok iyiydi. Sadece kendi çalışmaları korku odağında olduğu için o duyguyu baya fazla derinlemesine anlatmış ki bu gayet anlaşılabilir tabi, ama biraz sıktı o kısım. Yine de geneli güzel bi kitaptı yazar iyi bir iş çıkartmış.

[Adrian Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some sections of this book that were so engaging that I was immersed and lots of others where I had difficulty connecting with it. Overall it didn't feel very accessible in understanding, which is okay, it's not really written for a layman to grasp these emotional concepts, and thats okay that it's written for a particular audience, however I'm noticing that what I wanted to read and digest was more based in everyday language. Kind how Bart Ehrman writes amazing books synthesizing very complex ideas in a way that an average joe can grasp. I got about halfway through the book and started to feel an aversion to even picking it back up. I think I'll def go back to it one day in the near future and finish it but not soon soo....

[Andrew Schroeder · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very comprehensive understanding of how your emotions work. The author gives both history lessons in evolution of why we evolved emotions and history lessons of the different models of the brain. It uses words that you may have to look up to get a clearer understanding, but that comes with the territory of trading a book on neuroscience. I do wish he covered whether or not Neuro-Linguistic Programming was a pseudoscience or not since it is a popular subject among personal development. There is no mention of NLP, and yes, typically, scientists don't acknowledge fake science. So I'll leave it as that.

My favorite takeaway from this book was the author answers a question I didn't even think about before I picked this book. Whether or not pets and animals have thoughts.

[Niwa Patangwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was definitely a harder read than I was expecting. At times, I felt as though I was reading a textbook for a university module. This book took me much longer to finish, and I also found the information harder to retain. Whilst the book provided a lot of useful information and insight, it presented neuroscience in a way that felt more suited to doctors, medical students, and those working in the health profession. The book not only explores neuroscience itself but also follows the evolution of the field through its history, which, although interesting, made the book feel quite heavy for someone who is interested in the topic but does not necessarily have a medical background.

I think the timing of when I picked up this book was actually quite good, as it came later in my neuroscience journey, when I was able to understand the concepts being discussed much more easily. Whilst it was very well written and full of information, I did not find it particularly accessible to everyone. The writing style was quite dry and academic, which made the book more difficult and time consuming to read. I think this naturally narrows its audience, especially when both I and other reviewers mentioned that it took them most of the summer to finish.

This book is certainly targeted towards readers who want to learn more about the anatomy of the brain and its history through different experiments and models. It has more of a scientific approach to understanding the brain, with a particular focus on fear and how it operates within the brain. However, I found this somewhat misleading, as I expected a book called The Emotional Brain to explore emotions more broadly and examine how different emotions operate within the brain.
I also felt that the book focused less on the social and personal aspects of emotion, such as how an individual’s experiences throughout life can shape their emotional responses. Whilst I understand that this was not necessarily the focus of the book, it was something I had expected going into it, and I think this contributed to some of my disappointment with the book.

[Selena Stan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book in its time, I found this disappointing for two reasons:

- language: author uses a lot of technical concepts, does not seem to address the larger audience and delivers the message in a rather dry, scholastic manner;
- expectations: almost 100% of the book is focused on anxiety and the "feeling" of fear. I find the title & overall presentation misleading and I was disappointed by the narrow focus. It would have been fair to entitle this " the anxious brain - a radiography of fear" or something else to the point.

Anyway, if you are interested in anxiety related topics & can cope with a technical approach, it's worth your time.

[Heathyr]

This is a good overview of emotive processing, and relatively accessible for those who haven't studied psychology. At the time of writing this review, I'm a 4th year student of neuroscience and cognitive science, and the content of this book is up to a 2nd year university level. It goes through the expected things, such as the Cannon-Bard vs. James-Lange theory of emotion; the neural substrates such as amygdala and cortical processing, the HPA axis, etc.; Pavlov; HM; and long-term potentiation.

[Carlos Allende · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Must for everyone willing to understand emotions

I wished I had read this book years ago! It is a comprehensive, and easy-to-read review of everything we know about emotion. Rather than simply regurgitating knowledge, Ledoux takes your hand on a stroll through others’ research and his own to understand what emotions are and how they affect behavior. Ledoux critiques to how cognitive scientists have minimized the role of emotions are on point. It is appalling how, despite this book coming out in the 90s, some authors still ignore the appraising nature of emotions.