Neural Evidence That Human Emotions Share Core Affective Properties

Research on the "emotional brain" remains centered around the idea that emotions like fear, happiness, and sadness result from specialized and distinct neural circuitry. Accumulating behavioral and physiological evidence suggests, instead, that emotions are grounded in core affect—a person...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science 2013-06, Vol.24 (6), p.947-956
Main Authors: Wilson-Mendenhall, Christine D., Barrett, Lisa Feldman, Barsalou, Lawrence W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Affect - physiology
Affectivity. Emotion
Amygdala
Amygdala - physiology
Anatomical correlates of behavior
Arousal
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Brain
Cognitive psychology
Correlation analysis
Cortex
Emotion
Emotional expression
Emotional states
Emotions
Emotions - classification
Emotions - physiology
Evidence
Fear
Fear & phobias
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Happiness
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Medical imaging
Neuroimaging
Neuropsychology
Personality. Affectivity
Pleasure
Prefrontal Cortex - physiology
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Sadness
Social psychology
Unpleasant
Young Adult
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Summary:Research on the "emotional brain" remains centered around the idea that emotions like fear, happiness, and sadness result from specialized and distinct neural circuitry. Accumulating behavioral and physiological evidence suggests, instead, that emotions are grounded in core affect—a person's fluctuating level of pleasant or unpleasant arousal. A neuroimaging study revealed that participants' subjective ratings of valence (i.e., pleasure/displeasure) and of arousal evoked by various fear, happiness, and sadness experiences correlated with neural activity in specific brain regions (orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala, respectively). We observed these correlations across diverse instances within each emotion category, as well as across instances from all three categories. Consistent with a psychological construction approach to emotion, the results suggest that neural circuitry realizes more basic processes across discrete emotions. The implicated brain regions regulate the body to deal with the world, producing the affective changes at the core of emotions and many other psychological phenomena.
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1177/0956797612464242