Endira Ferrara
One of the most interesting themes in the reading for this week I found to be the idea that reason and emotion intersect in various parts of the brain structure. In "Descartes Error," the suggestion that certain psychological illnesses tend to damage not only one's ability to make decisions, but also one's capacity to exhibit feeling, reveals that the respective realms of rationality and emotion are linked. The idea that the systems in the brain related to the thinking process are the same as those which govern emotion is contrary to the common assumption that reason and emotion counteract one another.
LeDoux describes some of the various theories concerning the structure of the brain, which help to explain the link between reason and emotion. For example, the Papez hypothesis advocates that sensory inputs absorbed by the brain split into different systems - one into the stream of thought (the cortex), and another into the stream of feeling (the hypothalamus). In other words, emotions arise out of direct sensory experience, and are processed as both thought and feeling. Through the stream of thought, the sensations are processed into information consisting of memory or perception of that experience. It makes sense to perceive of the act of processing emotional experience occurring simultaneously with behavioral expression. The fact that one exhibits emotion and attains a consciousness of the feeling itself stems from the thought process, and in part from the desire to understand and categorize the feeling. This may be one way to explain the notion that the thought and emotional processes in the brain are inextricably linked. The attempt to rationalize, understand, or categorize experience in terms of emotion also demonstrates the way in which reason and emotion are connected.
Another important theory described by LeDoux is that of MacLean's, which suggests that emotions are inherently involved in the maintaining of survival for the human being. They are the result of visceral sensations (i.e. those that are instinctual), and thus reflect the evolution of the brain. MacLean argues that the visceral brain "eludes the grasp of the intellect because its animalistic and primitive structure makes it impossible to communicate in verbal terms (p.96, The Emotional Brain)." If this is the case, then emotions stem from an arguably conscious, reasonable place - in part, the desire to communicate that which is essential to human survival and unable to be communicated in words.
LeDoux's conclusion, however, that there may not be one emotional system in the brain, but instead several, does leave room for the possibility that these emotional systems may be connected to the more reasonable, practical, decision-making aspects of the brain. The article on the "Structure of Emotions" describes emotions as psychological events, which are the product of an elaborate process within the brain. LeDoux stresses the desire on behalf of scientists to locate the emotional system's position in the brain, and the concept of emotion as a process or event also suggests that emotions are involved in a variety of systems with the brain and are not localized to a specific place.
5 comments:
I was also fascinated by the way in which the readings showed that lack of emotional processing directly interferes with reasoning and decision-making. In observing young children I find it very difficult to truly separate the cognitive development from the social and emotional development. The readings really emphasis the link between these processes that we tend to incorrectly dichotomize.
Another important aspect of the readings was the varying degrees to which people utilize sympathy or empathy in reading others’ emotions. Adolphs examines the involvement of the somatosensory related cortices in facial emotion recognition. He concludes that viewing emotions triggers emotional responses. Therefore, sympathy has an important role in emotional processing. However, in Damasio’s study of his patient, Eliot, we see someone highly capable of understanding hypothetical emotional, social or ethical situations. Yet Eliot’s reduced capacity for emotion prevented him from making real-life decisions informed by reasonable emotional and social processing. His emotional understanding seemed to lack sympathy or empathy. These two examples, as well as many others, point to the myriad ways that the brain deals with emotion.
In reading these studies I’m baffled by the number of brain regions and specificity of their purposes. What are the evolutionary purposes of having emotional processing occur in various pathways and regions? Imagine how much more devastating Eliot or Gage’s injuries might have been if all emotional activity was isolated in one single area. I also wonder about the flexibility of brain areas. To what extent may an intact area take over the work of a damaged area?
Sara D.
I too found the discussion of emotions and reason interesting. In almost all of the cases presented by Damasio, it appeared that the faculty for decision-making was effected in patients whose emotions were dulled as a result of damage to the frontal cortices. These patients still had the faculty for logic and reasoning, yet they were unable to properly make decisions, proving that decision-making is based on emotion and not reason.
I felt that LeDoux's explanation of both Papez's and MacLean's theories about emotion did help me to better understand the relationship between emotion and cognition, which I distinguished as completely separate from one another in the "what is an emotion?" piece that I prepared for the first class. Although LeDoux takes issue with both theories, I enjoyed that in this chapter the ideas built upon one another and became increasingly complex such that various questions that have arisen from the other readings (both personally and in class discussions) are beginning to be answered as a more complete picture of emotional processes is constructed and refined. For example, the description of the Papez circuit felt to me to be the first real acknowledgment that feelings can be stimulated by thoughts, not just by sensory experiences. This makes a lot of practical sense to me - I can observe it happening in myself all the time - and it relates to our critiques in class of the simpler, linear models which don't account for circular flow or simultaneous processes of cognition and emotion. One question I had was that in LeDoux's description of "psychic blindness," it seemed like the step that the animals were missing was similar to what we have discussed thus far as "appraisal," but by the time Kluver and Bucy were doing their work the Papez circuit was already in play and so had the idea of appraisal already been left in the dust? If so, is the "psychological significance" that the animals were lacking referring to the the ability to produce emotions at all i.e. the whole system?
I find that most of my personal thoughts after this weeks readings have been spoken in some form or another. I too was drawn to the idea that "rational" decision making is so closely tied to emotions. It is something that seems to be so evident in so many ways. In order to make rational decisions, one must understand the perspective of others.
Mikal Shapiro
I’m curious about the idea that emotions may not necessarily be part of an unconscious/subconscious process but instead speak of a different kind of consciousness, not readily analyzed by the intellect (Endira, MacLean). Maybe the intellect was conserved for the function of responding to emotional stimuli by judging and expanding the choices of possible action and expressing the feeling through language but not necessarily for understanding how or why the stimulus initially triggered the arousal. It does not make sense that the emerging function of neo-cortical brain reasoning originally served to source out the “stream of feeling,” so much as it has served to “ration” it into more sensible direction, given the external circumstances. It other words, it most likely arose as a rational mediator between stimuli and action. This may explain the difficulties in using cognitive brain tools like language, reason, and its companion technology to analyze the emotional core (in a sense, reversing cognitive thought down the flow of Schacter’s and Arnold’s one-way hypotheses). No wonder it sometimes seems like backwards thinking! At the very least, it’s not what the system seems designed to do. We certainly are attempting it though--through analysis and meta-analysis; through PET and fMRI technology that steadily advances our senses into the invisible. Could we ever completely understand a system of emotional and cognitive relationships evolved from an infinitely complex system of external (environmental) and internal (genetic) stimuli? And if we can’t, will our “partial” knowledge provide us with access to psychological wholeness or will it lead us to more “leucotomies?”
Although I tend to agree with LeDoux that cognitive and emotional systems are different but interconnected, is it possible that they are also unequal in domination and that this hierarchical configuration, like right-left hemisphere domination has something to do with “the need for one final controller rather than two” (Damasio)? I tend to think, due to its evolutionary history, that the older emotional brain is dominant (time tested, mother approved. Ha!). Granted, this is just an intuitive guess.
I do wonder if a rational understanding of our irrational emotional core would prove worthy of conservation. Furthermore, could our own brain evolve itself by scientific introspection? If we accept LeDoux’s definition of “the unconscious” and his posit that the emotional systems of our feelings are under the radar of consciousness, then by making the system “conscious”--by charting and subsequently manipulating the neurotransmissions--would they still be emotions? Or would they just become an extension of our thoughts?
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