The limbic system , also known as the paleomammalian cortex , is a set of brain structures located on both sides of the thalamus , immediately beneath the medial temporal lobe of the cerebrum primarily in the forebrain .
135-427: Its various components support a variety of functions including emotion , behavior , long-term memory , and olfaction . The limbic system is involved in lower order emotional processing of input from sensory systems and consists of the amygdala , mammillary bodies , stria medullaris , central gray and dorsal and ventral nuclei of Gudden. This processed information is often relayed to a collection of structures from
270-434: A big role in emotions. He suggested that physiological reactions contributed to emotional experience by facilitating a focused cognitive appraisal of a given physiologically arousing event and that this appraisal was what defined the subjective emotional experience. Emotions were thus a result of two-stage process: general physiological arousal, and experience of emotion. For example, the physiological arousal, heart pounding, in
405-539: A catch-all term to passions , sentiments and affections . The word "emotion" was coined in the early 1800s by Thomas Brown and it is around the 1830s that the modern concept of emotion first emerged for the English language. "No one felt emotions before about 1830. Instead they felt other things – 'passions', 'accidents of the soul', 'moral sentiments' – and explained them very differently from how we understand emotions today." Some cross-cultural studies indicate that
540-680: A community, and self-esteem is one's estimate of one's status. Somatic theories of emotion claim that bodily responses, rather than cognitive interpretations, are essential to emotions. The first modern version of such theories came from William James in the 1880s. The theory lost favor in the 20th century, but has regained popularity more recently due largely to theorists such as John T. Cacioppo , Antonio Damasio , Joseph E. LeDoux and Robert Zajonc who are able to appeal to neurological evidence. In his 1884 article William James argued that feelings and emotions were secondary to physiological phenomena. In his theory, James proposed that
675-552: A continuum of intensity. Thus fear might range from mild concern to terror or shame might range from simple embarrassment to toxic shame. Emotions have been described as consisting of a coordinated set of responses, which may include verbal, physiological , behavioral, and neural mechanisms. Emotions have been categorized , with some relationships existing between emotions and some direct opposites existing. Graham differentiates emotions as functional or dysfunctional and argues all functional emotions have benefits. In some uses of
810-464: A controversial history, and despite modifications, still raises serious questions about benefit, risks, and the adequacy with which consent is obtained. Its continued use is defended by references to the "therapeutic imperative" to do something in the case of psychiatric patients who have not responded to other forms of treatment, and the evidence that some patients see improvement in their symptoms following surgery. There remain however problems concerning
945-446: A degree of pleasure or displeasure . There is no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotions are often intertwined with mood , temperament , personality , disposition , or creativity . Research on emotion has increased over the past two decades, with many fields contributing, including psychology , medicine , history , sociology of emotions , computer science and philosophy . The numerous attempts to explain
1080-453: A high emotional arousal. When completing the maze task, these rats had an impaired effect on their hippocampal-dependent memory when compared to the control group. Then, in a second condition, a group of rats were injected with anxiogenic drugs. Like the former these results reported similar outcomes, in that hippocampal-memory was also impaired. Studies such as these reinforce the impact that the hippocampus has on memory processing, in particular
1215-607: A motive to any action of the will… it can never oppose passion in the direction of the will… The reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them". With these lines, Hume attempted to explain that reason and further action would be subject to the desires and experience of the self. Later thinkers would propose that actions and emotions are deeply interrelated with social, political, historical, and cultural aspects of reality that would also come to be associated with sophisticated neurological and physiological research on
1350-475: A number of methodological problems, including the problems associated with non-standardised diagnoses and outcome measurements, the small numbers treated at any one centre, and positive publication bias . Controlled studies are very few in number and there have been no placebo-controlled studies. There are no systematic reviews or meta-analyses. Modern techniques have greatly reduced the risks of psychosurgery, although risks of adverse effects still remain. Whilst
1485-399: A pattern of physiological response (increased heart rate, faster breathing, etc.), which is interpreted as a particular emotion (fear). This theory is supported by experiments in which by manipulating the bodily state induces a desired emotional state. Some people may believe that emotions give rise to emotion-specific actions, for example, "I'm crying because I'm sad", or "I ran away because I
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#17327904096051620-409: A recognition that its presence "represents the history of the evolution of mammals and their distinctive family way of life." In the 1960s, Dr. MacLean enlarged his theory to address the human brain's overall structure and divided its evolution into three parts, an idea that he termed the triune brain. In addition to identifying the limbic system, he hypothesized a supposedly more primitive brain called
1755-444: A reduced threshold to visual stimuli, and were thus unable to recognize objects that were once familiar. MacLean expanded these ideas to include additional structures in a more dispersed "limbic system", more on the lines of the system described above. MacLean developed the theory of the "triune brain" to explain its evolution and to try to reconcile rational human behavior with its more "primal" and "violent" side. He became interested in
1890-401: A report, but the response was hostile and he did no further operations. Early in the 20th century, Russian neurologist Vladimir Bekhterev and Estonian neurosurgeon Ludvig Puusepp operated on three patients with mental illness, with discouraging results. Although there had been earlier attempts to treat psychiatric disorders with brain surgery, it was Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz who
2025-551: A response to an evoking stimulus, the sight of a bear in the kitchen. The brain then quickly scans the area, to explain the pounding, and notices the bear. Consequently, the brain interprets the pounding heart as being the result of fearing the bear. With his student, Jerome Singer , Schachter demonstrated that subjects can have different emotional reactions despite being placed into the same physiological state with an injection of epinephrine. Subjects were observed to express either anger or amusement depending on whether another person in
2160-484: A series of holes on either side of a woman's skull and injected ethanol to destroy small areas of subcortical white matter in the frontal lobes . After a few operations using ethanol, Moniz and Almeida Lima changed their technique and cut out small cores of brain tissue. They designed an instrument which they called a leucotome and called the operation a leucotomy (cutting of the white matter). After twenty operations, they published an account of their work. The reception
2295-424: A set of subcortical structures that direct intentional movements. The basal ganglia are located near the thalamus and hypothalamus. They receive input from the cerebral cortex, which sends outputs to the motor centers in the brain stem. A part of the basal ganglia called the striatum controls posture and movement. Recent studies indicate that if there is an inadequate supply of dopamine in the striatum, this can lead to
2430-418: A small piece of brain is destroyed or removed. The most common types of psychosurgery in current or recent use are anterior capsulotomy, cingulotomy , subcaudate tractotomy and limbic leucotomy . Lesions are made by radiation, thermo-coagulation, freezing or cutting. About a third of patients show significant improvement in their symptoms after operation. Advances in surgical technique have greatly reduced
2565-457: A snake. Psychosurgery Psychosurgery , also called neurosurgery for mental disorder ( NMD ), is the neurosurgical treatment of mental disorders . Psychosurgery has always been a controversial medical field. The modern history of psychosurgery begins in the 1880s under the Swiss psychiatrist Gottlieb Burckhardt . The first significant foray into psychosurgery in the 20th century
2700-433: A subject with ventromedial frontal lobe damage described in the book Descartes' Error , Damasio demonstrated how loss of physiological capacity for emotion resulted in the subject's lost capacity to make decisions despite having robust faculties for rationally assessing options. Research on physiological emotion has caused modern neuroscience to abandon the model of emotions and rationality as opposing forces. In contrast to
2835-528: A term that was introduced in 1949 by the American physician and neuroscientist, Paul D. MacLean . The French physician Paul Broca first called this part of the brain le grand lobe limbique in 1878. He examined the differentiation between deeply recessed cortical tissue and underlying, subcortical nuclei. However, most of its putative role in emotion was developed only in 1937 when the American physician James Papez described his anatomical model of emotion,
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#17327904096052970-432: A theistic origin to humanity. God who created humans gave humans the ability to feel emotion and interact emotionally. Biblical content expresses that God is a person who feels and expresses emotion. Though a somatic view would place the locus of emotions in the physical body, Christian theory of emotions would view the body more as a platform for the sensing and expression of emotions. Therefore, emotions themselves arise from
3105-581: A year were undergoing psychosurgery in the early 1980s. In 2005 the Health Authority recommended the use of ablative psychosurgery and DBS for OCD. In the early 2000s in Spain about 24 psychosurgical operations (capsulotomy, cingulotomy, subcaudate tractotomy, and hypothalamotomy) a year were being performed. OCD was the most common diagnosis, but psychosurgery was also being used in the treatment of anxiety and schizophrenia, and other disorders. In
3240-410: Is "critical for effectively combining the 'what', 'when', and 'where' qualities of each experience to compose the retrieved memory". This makes the left hippocampus a key component in the retrieval of spatial memory. However, Spreng found that the left hippocampus is a general concentrated region for binding together bits and pieces of memory composed not only by the hippocampus, but also by other areas of
3375-529: Is 'good' or 'bad'. Alternatively, there are 'good emotions' (like joy and caution) experienced by those that are wise, which come from correct appraisals of what is 'good' and 'bad'. Aristotle believed that emotions were an essential component of virtue . In the Aristotelian view all emotions (called passions) corresponded to appetites or capacities. During the Middle Ages , the Aristotelian view
3510-425: Is a felt tendency impelling people towards attractive objects and propelling them to move away from repulsive or harmful objects; a disposition to possess the object (greed), to destroy it (hatred), to flee from it (fear), to get obsessed or worried over it (anxiety), and so on. In Stoic theories, normal emotions (like delight and fear) are described as irrational impulses that come from incorrect appraisals of what
3645-407: Is an area of cognition specific to the amygdala. In a study done by Todorov, fMRI tasks were performed with participants to evaluate whether the amygdala was involved in the general evaluation of faces. After the study, Todorov concluded from his fMRI results that the amygdala did indeed play a key role in the general evaluation of faces. However, in a study performed by researchers Koscik and his team,
3780-556: Is associated with a particular pattern of physiological activity". Emotions are complex, involving multiple different components, such as subjective experience, cognitive processes , expressive behavior, psychophysiological changes, and instrumental behavior. At one time, academics attempted to identify the emotion with one of the components: William James with a subjective experience, behaviorists with instrumental behavior, psychophysiologists with physiological changes, and so on. More recently, emotion has been said to consist of all
3915-416: Is generally disposed to feel irritation more easily or quickly than others do. Finally, some theorists place emotions within a more general category of "affective states" where affective states can also include emotion-related phenomena such as pleasure and pain , motivational states (for example, hunger or curiosity ), moods, dispositions and traits. For more than 40 years, Paul Ekman has supported
4050-439: Is known as "core-SELF" to be generating these affects. Psychologists have used methods such as factor analysis to attempt to map emotion-related responses onto a more limited number of dimensions. Such methods attempt to boil emotions down to underlying dimensions that capture the similarities and differences between experiences. Often, the first two dimensions uncovered by factor analysis are valence (how negative or positive
4185-417: Is no single, universally accepted evolutionary theory. The most prominent ideas suggest that emotions have evolved to serve various adaptive functions: A distinction can be made between emotional episodes and emotional dispositions. Emotional dispositions are also comparable to character traits, where someone may be said to be generally disposed to experience certain emotions. For example, an irritable person
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4320-463: Is not as clear as it seems. Paul D. MacLean claims that emotion competes with even more instinctive responses, on one hand, and the more abstract reasoning, on the other hand. The increased potential in neuroimaging has also allowed investigation into evolutionarily ancient parts of the brain. Important neurological advances were derived from these perspectives in the 1990s by Joseph E. LeDoux and Antonio Damasio . For example, in an extensive study of
4455-647: Is not regulated in China, and its use has been criticised in the West. India had an extensive psychosurgery programme until the 1980s, using it to treat addiction, and aggressive behaviour in adults and children, as well as depression and OCD. Cingulotomy and capsulotomy for depression and OCD continue to be used, for example at the BSES MG Hospital in Mumbai. In Japan the first lobotomy was performed in 1939 and
4590-564: Is often incorrectly classified as a cerebral structure, but simply interacts heavily with the cerebral cortex. These interactions are closely linked to olfaction, emotions, drives, autonomic regulation, memory, and pathologically to encephalopathy, epilepsy, psychotic symptoms, cognitive defects. The functional relevance of the limbic system has proven to serve many different functions such as affects/emotions, memory, sensory processing, time perception, attention, consciousness, instincts, autonomic/vegetative control, and actions/motor behavior. Some of
4725-477: Is poor and the Royal College of Psychiatrists in their 2000 report concluded that there were no simple answers to the question of modern psychosurgery's clinical effectiveness; studies suggested improvements in symptoms following surgery but it was impossible to establish the extent to which other factors contributed to this improvement. Research into the effects of psychosurgery has not been able to overcome
4860-414: Is thought to integrate spatial and episodic memories with the limbic system via a feedback loop that provides emotional context of a particular sensory input. While the dorsal hippocampus is involved in spatial memory formation, the left hippocampus is a participant in the recall of these spatial memories. Eichenbaum and his team found, when studying the hippocampal lesions in rats, that the left hippocampus
4995-475: The James–Lange theory . As James wrote, "the perception of bodily changes, as they occur, is the emotion". James further claims that "we feel sad because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and either we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be". An example of this theory in action would be as follows: An emotion-evoking stimulus (snake) triggers
5130-489: The Papez circuit . The first evidence that the limbic system was responsible for the cortical representation of emotions was discovered in 1939, by Heinrich Kluver and Paul Bucy. Kluver and Bucy, after much research, demonstrated that the bilateral removal of the temporal lobes in monkeys created an extreme behavioral syndrome. After performing a temporal lobectomy, the monkeys showed a decrease in aggression. The animals revealed
5265-562: The amygdala , was developed as a treatment for aggression by Hideki Narabayashi in 1961 and is still used occasionally, for example at the Medical College of Georgia . There is debate about whether deep brain stimulation (DBS) should be classed as a form of psychosurgery. Success rates for anterior capsulotomy, anterior cingulotomy, subcaudate tractotomy, and limbic leucotomy in treating depression and OCD have been reported as between 25 and 70 percent. The quality of outcome data
5400-418: The diencephalon (particularly the thalamus ), before being subjected to any further processing. Therefore, Cannon also argued that it was not anatomically possible for sensory events to trigger a physiological response prior to triggering conscious awareness and emotional stimuli had to trigger both physiological and experiential aspects of emotion simultaneously. Stanley Schachter formulated his theory on
5535-400: The telencephalon , diencephalon , and mesencephalon , including the prefrontal cortex , cingulate gyrus , limbic thalamus, hippocampus including the parahippocampal gyrus and subiculum , nucleus accumbens (limbic striatum), anterior hypothalamus , ventral tegmental area , midbrain raphe nuclei , habenular commissure , entorhinal cortex , and olfactory bulbs . The limbic system
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5670-467: The " wheel of emotions ", suggesting eight primary emotions grouped on a positive or negative basis: joy versus sadness; anger versus fear; trust versus disgust; and surprise versus anticipation. Some basic emotions can be modified to form complex emotions. The complex emotions could arise from cultural conditioning or association combined with the basic emotions. Alternatively, similar to the way primary colors combine, primary emotions could blend to form
5805-497: The "boundaries" of the limbic system have been repeatedly redefined because of advances in neuroscience. Therefore, while it is true that limbic interacting structures are more closely related to emotion, the limbic system itself is best thought of as a component of a larger emotional processing plant. Emotion Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts , feelings , behavioral responses , and
5940-422: The "high" derived from certain recreational drugs . These responses are heavily modulated by dopaminergic projections from the limbic system. In 1954, Olds and Milner found that rats with metal electrodes implanted into their nucleus accumbens, as well as their septal nuclei , repeatedly pressed a lever activating this region. The limbic system also interacts with the basal ganglia . The basal ganglia are
6075-511: The 1950s, due to the introduction of new drugs and a growing awareness of the long-term damage caused by the operations, as well as doubts about its efficacy. By the 1970s, the standard or transorbital lobotomy had been replaced with other forms of psychosurgical operations. During the 1960s and 1970s, psychosurgery became the subject of increasing public concern and debate, culminating in the US with congressional hearings. Particularly controversial in
6210-550: The R-complex, related to reptiles, which controls basic functions like muscle movement and breathing. According to him, the third part, the neocortex, controls speech and reasoning and is the most recent evolutionary arrival. The concept of the limbic system has since been further expanded and developed by Walle Nauta , Lennart Heimer , and others. There is controversy over the use of the term limbic system , with scientists such as Joseph E. LeDoux and Edmund Rolls arguing that
6345-631: The UK between the late 1990s and 2009 there were just two centres using psychosurgery: a few stereotactic anterior capsulotomies are performed every year at the University Hospital of Wales , Cardiff, while anterior cingulotomies are carried out by the Advanced Interventions Service at Ninewells Hospital , Dundee. The patients have diagnoses of depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety. Ablative psychosurgery
6480-420: The UK from the 1960s to the 1990s. It targets the lower medial quadrant of the frontal lobes, severing connections between the limbic system and supra-orbital part of the frontal lobe. Limbic leucotomy is a combination of subcaudate tractotomy and anterior cingulotomy. It was used at Atkinson Morley Hospital London in the 1990s and also at Massachusetts General Hospital . Amygdalotomy , which targets
6615-404: The UK, it is only used in a few centres on small numbers of people with depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In some countries it is also used in the treatment of schizophrenia and other disorders. Psychosurgery is a collaboration between psychiatrists and neurosurgeons. During the operation, which is carried out under a general anaesthetic and using stereotactic methods,
6750-583: The United States was the work of Harvard neurosurgeon Vernon Mark and psychiatrist Frank Ervin , who carried out amygdalotomies in the hope of reducing violence and "pathologic aggression" in patients with temporal lobe seizures and wrote a book entitled Violence and the Brain in 1970. The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research in 1977 endorsed
6885-675: The Victoria Psychosurgery Review Board dealt with 12 applications, all them for DBS. In the 20-year period 1971–1991 the Committee on Psychosurgery in the Netherlands and Belgium oversaw 79 operations. Since 2000 there has been only one centre in Belgium performing psychosurgery, carrying out about 8 or 9 operations a year (some capsulotomies and some DBS), mostly for OCD. In France about five people
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#17327904096057020-710: The Western philosophers (including Aristotle , Plato , Descartes , Aquinas , and Hobbes ), leading them to propose extensive theories—often competing theories—that sought to explain emotion and the accompanying motivators of human action, as well as its consequences. In the Age of Enlightenment , Scottish thinker David Hume proposed a revolutionary argument that sought to explain the main motivators of human action and conduct. He proposed that actions are motivated by "fears, desires, and passions". As he wrote in his book A Treatise of Human Nature (1773): "Reason alone can never be
7155-419: The accompanying bodily sensations have always been part of the interests of thinkers and philosophers. Far more extensively, this has also been of great interest to both Western and Eastern societies. Emotional states have been associated with the divine and with the enlightenment of the human mind and body. The ever-changing actions of individuals and their mood variations have been of great importance to most of
7290-424: The accuracy of the terms "reptilian" and "old mammalian". The common ancestors of reptiles and mammals had a well-developed limbic system in which the basic subdivisions and connections of the amygdalar nuclei were established. Further, birds, which evolved from the dinosaurs, which in turn evolved separately but around the same time as the mammals, have a well-developed limbic system. While the anatomic structures of
7425-678: The age of 35, were operated on annually. In the Soviet Union, leucotomies were used for the treatment of schizophrenia in the 1940s, but the practice was prohibited by the Ministry of Health in 1950. In the United States, the Massachusetts General Hospital has a psychosurgery program. Operations are also performed at a few other centres. In Mexico, psychosurgery is used in the treatment of anorexia and aggression. In Canada, anterior capsulotomies are used in
7560-408: The aim is to stimulate areas of the brain with implanted electrodes . All the forms of psychosurgery in use today (or used in recent years) target the limbic system , which involves structures such as the amygdala , hippocampus , certain thalamic and hypothalamic nuclei, prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex , and cingulate gyrus —all connected by fibre pathways and thought to play a part in
7695-412: The amygdala also played a generalized role in the overall evaluation of first impression of faces. This latter conclusion, along with Todorov's study on the amygdala's role in general evaluations of faces and Koscik's research on trustworthiness and the amygdala, further solidified evidence that the amygdala plays a role in overall social processing. Based on experiments done on monkeys, the destruction of
7830-458: The amygdala seems to be an important structure in this ability. Foremost, however, this structure was historically thought to be linked to fear, allowing the individual to take action in response to that fear. However, as time has gone by, researchers such as Pessoa, generalized this concept with help from evidence of EEG recordings, and concluded that the amygdala helps an organism to define a stimulus and therefore respond accordingly. However, when
7965-430: The amygdala was initially thought to be linked to fear, this gave way for research in the amygdala for emotional processes. Kheirbek demonstrated research that the amygdala is involved in emotional processes, in particular the ventral hippocampus. He described the ventral hippocampus as having a role in neurogenesis and the creation of adult-born granule cells (GC). These cells not only were a crucial part of neurogenesis and
8100-496: The ancient Greek ideal of dispassionate reason, the neuroscience of emotion shows that emotion is necessarily integrated with intellect. Research on social emotion also focuses on the physical displays of emotion including body language of animals and humans (see affect display ). For example, spite seems to work against the individual but it can establish an individual's reputation as someone to be feared. Shame and pride can motivate behaviors that help one maintain one's standing in
8235-514: The anterior cingulate region. Anterior capsulotomy was developed in Sweden, where it became the most frequently used procedure. It is also used in Scotland and Canada. The aim of the operation is to disconnect the orbitofrontal cortex and thalamic nuclei by inducing a lesion in the anterior limb of internal capsule . Subcaudate tractotomy was the most commonly used form of psychosurgery in
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#17327904096058370-415: The appraisal of situations and contexts. Cognitive processes, like reasoning and decision-making, are often regarded as separate from emotional processes, making a division between "thinking" and "feeling". However, not all theories of emotion regard this separation as valid. Nowadays, most research into emotions in the clinical and well-being context focuses on emotion dynamics in daily life, predominantly
8505-451: The appropriate neural nets and re-activated." These cues for emotional events created by the amygdala encompass the EAM networks previously mentioned. Besides memory, the amygdala also seems to be an important brain region involved in attentional and emotional processes. First, to define attention in cognitive terms, attention is the ability to focus on some stimuli while ignoring others. Thus,
8640-462: The brain and other parts of the physical body. The Lexico definition of emotion is "A strong feeling deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others". Emotions are responses to significant internal and external events. Emotions can be occurrences (e.g., panic ) or dispositions (e.g., hostility), and short-lived (e.g., anger) or long-lived (e.g., grief). Psychotherapist Michael C. Graham describes all emotions as existing on
8775-551: The brain to be recalled at a later time. Eichenbaum's research in 2007 also demonstrates that the parahippocampal area of the hippocampus is another specialized region for the retrieval of memories just like the left hippocampus. The hippocampus, over the decades, has also been found to have a huge impact in learning. Curlik and Shors examined the effects of neurogenesis in the hippocampus and its effects on learning. This researcher and his team employed many different types of mental and physical training on their subjects, and found that
8910-405: The brain's center of emotions, including the hippocampus and amygdala. Developing observations made by Papez, he hypothesized that the limbic system had evolved in early mammals to control fight-or-flight responses and react to both emotionally pleasurable and painful sensations. The concept is now broadly accepted in neuroscience. Additionally, MacLean said that the idea of the limbic system leads to
9045-417: The brain's control of emotion and behavior. After initial studies of brain activity in epileptic patients, he turned to cats, monkeys, and other models, using electrodes to stimulate different parts of the brain in conscious animals recording their responses. In the 1950s, he began to trace individual behaviors like aggression and sexual arousal to their physiological sources. He postulated the limbic system as
9180-443: The categorization of "emotion" and classification of basic emotions such as "anger" and "sadness" are not universal and that the boundaries and domains of these concepts are categorized differently by all cultures. However, others argue that there are some universal bases of emotions (see Section 6.1). In psychiatry and psychology, an inability to express or perceive emotion is sometimes referred to as alexithymia . Human nature and
9315-470: The components of the James-Lange theory of emotions. The James–Lange theory has remained influential. Its main contribution is the emphasis it places on the embodiment of emotions, especially the argument that changes in the bodily concomitants of emotions can alter their experienced intensity. Most contemporary neuroscientists would endorse a modified James–Lange view in which bodily feedback modulates
9450-581: The components. The different components of emotion are categorized somewhat differently depending on the academic discipline. In psychology and philosophy , emotion typically includes a subjective , conscious experience characterized primarily by psychophysiological expressions , biological reactions , and mental states . A similar multi-componential description of emotion is found in sociology . For example, Peggy Thoits described emotions as involving physiological components, cultural or emotional labels (anger, surprise, etc.), expressive body actions, and
9585-426: The connections between the prefrontal lobes and deeper structures in the brain were severed by making a sweeping cut through a burr hole on either side of the skull. They called their new operation a lobotomy . Freeman went on to develop a new form of lobotomy which could be dispensed without the need for a neurosurgeon. He hammered an ice pick-like instrument, an orbitoclast, through the eye socket and swept through
9720-400: The continued limited use of psychosurgical procedures. Since then, a few facilities in some countries, such as the US, have continued to use psychosurgery on small numbers of patients. In the US and other Western countries, the number of operations has further declined over the past 30 years, a period during which there had been no major advances in ablative psychosurgery. Psychosurgery has
9855-407: The contribution of this tragic "experiment" in her 2013 book. Another integrative part of the limbic system, the amygdala, which is the deepest part of the limbic system, is involved in many cognitive processes and is largely considered the most primordial and vital part of the limbic system. Like the hippocampus, processes in the amygdala seem to impact memory; however, it is not spatial memory as in
9990-402: The course of fifty years he participated in thousands of tests and research projects that provided specific information on exactly what he had lost. Semantic and episodic events faded within minutes, having never reached his long-term memory, yet emotions, unconnected from the details of causation, were often retained. Dr. Suzanne Corkin, who worked with him for 46 years until his death, described
10125-403: The dentate gyrus (DG) of the dorsal hippocampus, impacting the hippocampus and its contribution to the learning process. Damage related to the hippocampal region of the brain has reported vast effects on overall cognitive functioning, particularly memory such as spatial memory. As previously mentioned, spatial memory is a cognitive function greatly intertwined with the hippocampus. While damage to
10260-419: The disorders associated with the limbic system and its interacting components are epilepsy and schizophrenia. The hippocampus is involved with various processes relating to cognition and is one of the best understood and heavily involved limbic interacting structure. The first and most widely researched area concerns memory, particularly spatial memory . Spatial memory was found to have many sub-regions in
10395-443: The distinct facial expressions. Ekman's facial-expression research examined six basic emotions: anger , disgust , fear , happiness , sadness and surprise . Later in his career, Ekman theorized that other universal emotions may exist beyond these six. In light of this, recent cross-cultural studies led by Daniel Cordaro and Dacher Keltner , both former students of Ekman, extended the list of universal emotions. In addition to
10530-408: The earlier work of a Spanish physician, Gregorio Marañón , who injected patients with epinephrine and subsequently asked them how they felt. Marañón found that most of these patients felt something but in the absence of an actual emotion-evoking stimulus, the patients were unable to interpret their physiological arousal as an experienced emotion. Schachter did agree that physiological reactions played
10665-862: The experience feels) and arousal (how energized or enervated the experience feels). These two dimensions can be depicted on a 2D coordinate map. This two-dimensional map has been theorized to capture one important component of emotion called core affect . Core affect is not theorized to be the only component to emotion, but to give the emotion its hedonic and felt energy. Using statistical methods to analyze emotional states elicited by short videos, Cowen and Keltner identified 27 varieties of emotional experience: admiration, adoration, aesthetic appreciation, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, relief, romance, sadness, satisfaction, sexual desire, and surprise. In Hinduism, Bharata Muni enunciated
10800-434: The experience of emotion. (p. 583) Walter Bradford Cannon agreed that physiological responses played a crucial role in emotions, but did not believe that physiological responses alone could explain subjective emotional experiences. He argued that physiological responses were too slow and often imperceptible and this could not account for the relatively rapid and intense subjective awareness of emotion. He also believed that
10935-436: The following: Śṛṅgāraḥ (शृङ्गारः): Romance / Love / attractiveness, Hāsyam (हास्यं): Laughter / mirth / comedy, Raudram (रौद्रं): Fury / Anger, Kāruṇyam (कारुण्यं): Compassion / mercy, Bībhatsam (बीभत्सं): Disgust / aversion, Bhayānakam (भयानकं): Horror / terror, Veeram (वीरं): Pride / Heroism, Adbhutam (अद्भुतं): Surprise / wonder. In Buddhism , emotions occur when an object is considered attractive or repulsive. There
11070-404: The form of judgments, evaluations, or thoughts were entirely necessary for an emotion to occur. Cognitive theories of emotion emphasize that emotions are shaped by how individuals interpret and appraise situations. These theories highlight: These theories acknowledge that emotions are not automatic reactions but result from the interplay of cognitive interpretations, physiological responses, and
11205-471: The frontal lobes. The transorbital or "ice pick" lobotomy was done under local anesthesia or using electroconvulsive therapy to render the patient unconscious and could be performed in mental hospitals lacking surgical facilities. Such was Freeman's zeal that he began to travel around the nation in his own personal van, which he called his "lobotomobile", demonstrating the procedure in psychiatric hospitals. Freeman's patients included 19 children, one of whom
11340-473: The full spectrum of human emotional experience. For example, interpersonal anger and disgust could blend to form contempt . Relationships exist between basic emotions, resulting in positive or negative influences. Jaak Panksepp carved out seven biologically inherited primary affective systems called SEEKING (expectancy), FEAR (anxiety), RAGE (anger), LUST (sexual excitement), CARE (nurturance), PANIC/GRIEF (sadness), and PLAY (social joy). He proposed what
11475-468: The hippocampus but the semantic division of episodic-autobiographical memory (EAM) networks. Markowitsch's amygdala research shows it encodes, stores, and retrieves EAM memories. To delve deeper into these types of processes by the amygdala, Markowitsch and his team provided extensive evidence through investigations that the "amygdala's main function is to charge cues so that mnemonic events of a specific emotional significance can be successfully searched within
11610-490: The hippocampus is highly responsive to these latter tasks. Thus, they discovered an upsurge of new neurons and neural circuits in the hippocampus as a result of the training, causing an overall improvement in the learning of the task. This neurogenesis contributes to the creation of adult-born granules cells (GC), cells also described by Eichenbaum in his own research on neurogenesis and its contributions to learning. The creation of these cells exhibited "enhanced excitability" in
11745-439: The hippocampus may be a result of a brain injury or other injuries of that sort, researchers particularly investigated the effects that high emotional arousal and certain types of drugs had on the recall ability in this specific memory type. In particular, in a study performed by Parkard, rats were given the task of correctly making their way through a maze. In the first condition, rats were stressed by shock or restraint which caused
11880-453: The hippocampus, such as the dentate gyrus (DG) in the dorsal hippocampus, the left hippocampus, and the parahippocampal region. The dorsal hippocampus was found to be an important component for the generation of new neurons, called adult-born granules (GC), in adolescence and adulthood. These new neurons contribute to pattern separation in spatial memory, increasing the firing in cell networks, and overall causing stronger memory formations. This
12015-439: The hope of reducing the adverse effects of the operation. These techniques included William Beecher Scoville 's orbital undercutting , Jean Talairach's anterior capsulotomy , and Hugh Cairn's bilateral cingulotomy . Stereotactic techniques made it possible to place lesions more accurately, and experiments were done with alternatives to cutting instruments such as radiation. Psychosurgery nevertheless went into rapid decline in
12150-433: The idea of the amygdala in its critique of trustworthiness in others by performing a study in 2009 in which he examined the amygdala's role in evaluating general first impressions and relating them to real-world outcomes. Their study involved first impressions of CEOs. Rule demonstrated that while the amygdala did play a role in the evaluation of trustworthiness, as observed by Koscik in his own research two years later in 2011,
12285-399: The incidence of death and serious damage from psychosurgery; the remaining risks include seizures , incontinence, decreased drive and initiative, weight gain, and cognitive and affective problems. Currently, interest in the neurosurgical treatment of mental illness is shifting from ablative psychosurgery (where the aim is to destroy brain tissue) to deep brain stimulation (DBS) where
12420-488: The inclusion of cognitive appraisal as one of the elements is slightly controversial, since some theorists make the assumption that emotion and cognition are separate but interacting systems, the CPM provides a sequence of events that effectively describes the coordination involved during an emotional episode. Emotion can be differentiated from a number of similar constructs within the field of affective neuroscience : There
12555-449: The influence of emotions on health and behaviors, suggesting the need to manage emotions. Early modern views on emotion are developed in the works of philosophers such as René Descartes , Niccolò Machiavelli , Baruch Spinoza , Thomas Hobbes and David Hume . In the 19th century emotions were considered adaptive and were studied more frequently from an empiricist psychiatric perspective. Christian perspective on emotion presupposes
12690-482: The intensity of specific emotions and their variability, instability, inertia, and differentiation, as well as whether and how emotions augment or blunt each other over time and differences in these dynamics between people and along the lifespan. The word "emotion" dates back to 1579, when it was adapted from the French word émouvoir , which means "to stir up". The term emotion was introduced into academic discussion as
12825-450: The limbic system are different in birds and mammals, there are functional equivalents. The term limbic comes from the Latin limbus , for "border" or "edge", or, particularly in medical terminology, a border of an anatomical component. Paul Broca coined the term based on its physical location in the brain, sandwiched between two functionally different components. The limbic system is
12960-550: The limbic system is older than other parts of the forebrain, and that it developed to manage circuitry attributed to the fight or flight first identified by Hans Selye in his report of the General Adaptation Syndrome in 1936. It may be considered a part of survival adaptation in reptiles as well as mammals (including humans). MacLean postulated that the human brain has evolved three components, that evolved successively, with more recent components developing at
13095-431: The limbic system. In recent years, multiple additional limbic fiber connectivity has been revealed using difusion-weighted imaging MRI techniques. The equivalent fiber connectivity of all these pathways has been documented by dissection studies in primates. Some of these fiber tracts include the amygdalofugal tract, amygdalothalamic tract, stria terminalis, dorsal thalamo-hypothalamic tract, cerebellohypothalamic tracts, and
13230-419: The limbic system: The structures and interacting areas of the limbic system are involved in motivation, emotion, learning, and memory. The limbic system is where the subcortical structures meet the cerebral cortex. The limbic system operates by influencing the endocrine system and the autonomic nervous system . It is highly interconnected with the nucleus accumbens , which plays a role in sexual arousal and
13365-417: The main proponents of this view was Richard Lazarus who argued that emotions must have some cognitive intentionality . The cognitive activity involved in the interpretation of an emotional context may be conscious or unconscious and may or may not take the form of conceptual processing. Lazarus' theory is very influential; emotion is a disturbance that occurs in the following order: For example: Jenny sees
13500-662: The mid-late 19th century with Charles Darwin 's 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals . Darwin argued that emotions served no evolved purpose for humans, neither in communication, nor in aiding survival. Darwin largely argued that emotions evolved via the inheritance of acquired characters. He pioneered various methods for studying non-verbal expressions, from which he concluded that some expressions had cross-cultural universality. Darwin also detailed homologous expressions of emotions that occur in animals . This led
13635-453: The nine rasas (emotions) in the Nātyasāstra , an ancient Sanskrit text of dramatic theory and other performance arts, written between 200 BC and 200 AD. The theory of rasas still forms the aesthetic underpinning of all Indian classical dance and theatre, such as Bharatanatyam , kathak , Kuchipudi , Odissi , Manipuri , Kudiyattam , Kathakali and others. Bharata Muni established
13770-461: The operation was used extensively in mental hospitals. However, psychosurgery fell into disrepute in the 1970s, partly due to its use on children with behavioural problems. In the 1980s there were 10–20 operations a year in Australia and New Zealand. The number had decreased to one or two a year by the 1990s. In Victoria, there were no operations between 2001 and 2006, but between 2007 and 2012
13905-472: The origin, function , and other aspects of emotions have fostered intense research on this topic. Theorizing about the evolutionary origin and possible purpose of emotion dates back to Charles Darwin . Current areas of research include the neuroscience of emotion, using tools like PET and fMRI scans to study the affective picture processes in the brain . From a mechanistic perspective, emotions can be defined as "a positive or negative experience that
14040-445: The original six, these studies provided evidence for amusement , awe , contentment , desire , embarrassment , pain , relief , and sympathy in both facial and vocal expressions. They also found evidence for boredom , confusion , interest , pride , and shame facial expressions, as well as contempt , relief, and triumph vocal expressions. Robert Plutchik agreed with Ekman's biologically driven perspective but developed
14175-403: The parieto-occipito-hypothalamic tract. Currently, it is not considered an isolated entity responsible for the neurological regulation of emotion, but rather one of the many parts of the brain that regulate visceral autonomic processes . Therefore, the set of anatomical structures considered part of the limbic system is controversial. The following structures are, or have been considered, part of
14310-447: The perception of what he called an "exciting fact" directly led to a physiological response, known as "emotion". To account for different types of emotional experiences, James proposed that stimuli trigger activity in the autonomic nervous system , which in turn produces an emotional experience in the brain. The Danish psychologist Carl Lange also proposed a similar theory at around the same time, and therefore this theory became known as
14445-535: The person, or that which is "imago-dei" or Image of God in humans. In Christian thought, emotions have the potential to be controlled through reasoned reflection. That reasoned reflection also mimics God who made mind. The purpose of emotions in human life is therefore summarized in God's call to enjoy Him and creation, humans are to enjoy emotions and benefit from them and use them to energize behavior. Perspectives on emotions from evolutionary theory were initiated during
14580-414: The recall function of spatial memory. Furthermore, impairment to the hippocampus can occur from prolonged exposure to stress hormones such as glucocorticoids (GCs), which target the hippocampus and cause disruption in explicit memory . In an attempt to curtail life-threatening epileptic seizures, 27-year-old Henry Gustav Molaison underwent bilateral removal of almost all of his hippocampus in 1953. Over
14715-426: The regulation of emotion. There is no international consensus on the best target site. Anterior cingulotomy was first used by Hugh Cairns in the UK, and developed in the US by H.T. Ballantine Jr. In recent decades it has been the most commonly used psychosurgical procedure in the US. The target site is the anterior cingulate cortex; the operation disconnects the thalamic and posterior frontal regions and damages
14850-429: The result of a cognitive and conscious process which occurs in response to a body system response to a trigger. According to Scherer 's Component Process Model (CPM) of emotion, there are five crucial elements of emotion. From the component process perspective, emotional experience requires that all of these processes become coordinated and synchronized for a short period of time, driven by appraisal processes. Although
14985-513: The richness, variety, and temporal course of emotional experiences could not stem from physiological reactions, that reflected fairly undifferentiated fight or flight responses. An example of this theory in action is as follows: An emotion-evoking event (snake) triggers simultaneously both a physiological response and a conscious experience of an emotion. Phillip Bard contributed to the theory with his work on animals. Bard found that sensory, motor, and physiological information all had to pass through
15120-515: The risk of death or vascular injury has become extremely small, there remains a risk of seizures, fatigue, and personality changes following operation. A 2012 follow-up study of eight depressed patients who underwent anterior capsulotomy in Vancouver, Canada, classified five of them as responders at two to three years after surgery. Results on neuropsychological testing were unchanged or improved, although there were isolated deficits and one patient
15255-469: The situation (a confederate) displayed that emotion. Hence, the combination of the appraisal of the situation (cognitive) and the participants' reception of adrenalin or a placebo together determined the response. This experiment has been criticized in Jesse Prinz's (2004) Gut Reactions . With the two-factor theory now incorporating cognition, several theories began to argue that cognitive activity in
15390-508: The social context. A prominent philosophical exponent is Robert C. Solomon (for example, The Passions, Emotions and the Meaning of Life , 1993 ). Solomon claims that emotions are judgments. He has put forward a more nuanced view which responds to what he has called the 'standard objection' to cognitivism, the idea that a judgment that something is fearsome can occur with or without emotion, so judgment cannot be identified with emotion. One of
15525-417: The strengthening of spatial memory and learning in the hippocampus but also appear to be an essential component to the function of the amygdala. A deficit of these cells, as Pessoa (2009) predicted in his studies, would result in low emotional functioning, leading to high retention rate of mental diseases, such as anxiety disorders . Social processing, specifically the evaluation of faces in social processing,
15660-505: The symptoms of Parkinson's disease . The limbic system is also tightly connected to the prefrontal cortex . Some scientists contend that this connection is related to the pleasure obtained from solving problems. To cure severe emotional disorders, this connection was sometimes surgically severed, a procedure of psychosurgery , called a prefrontal lobotomy (this is actually a misnomer). Patients having undergone this procedure often became passive and lacked all motivation. The limbic system
15795-486: The temporal cortex almost always led to damage of the amygdala. This damage done to the amygdala led the physiologists Kluver and Bucy to pinpoint major changes in the behavior of the monkeys. The monkeys demonstrated the following changes: This set of behavioral change came to be known as the Klüver–Bucy syndrome. Paul D. MacLean , as part of his triune brain theory (which is now considered outdated ), hypothesized that
15930-412: The term be considered obsolete and abandoned. Originally, the limbic system was believed to be the emotional center of the brain, with cognition being the business of the neocortex . However, cognition depends on acquisition and retention of memories, in which the hippocampus, a primary limbic interacting structure, is involved: hippocampus damage causes severe cognitive (memory) deficits. More important,
16065-482: The top/front. These components are, respectively: According to Maclean, each of the components, although connected with the others, retained "their peculiar types of intelligence, subjectivity, sense of time and space, memory, mobility and other less specific functions". However, while the categorization into structures is reasonable, the recent studies of the limbic system of tetrapods , both living and extinct, have challenged several aspects of this hypothesis, notably
16200-485: The trait of trustworthiness was particularly examined in the evaluation of faces. Koscik and his team demonstrated that the amygdala was involved in evaluating the trustworthiness of an individual. They investigated how brain damage to the amygdala played a role in trustworthiness, and found that individuals with damaged amygdalas tended to confuse trust and betrayal, and thus placed trust in those having done them wrong. Furthermore, Rule, along with his colleagues, expanded on
16335-685: The treatment of depression and OCD. Venezuela has three centres performing psychosurgery. Capsulotomies, cingulotomies and amygdalotomies are used to treat OCD and aggression. Evidence of trepanning (or trephining)—the practice of drilling holes in the skull—has been found in a skull from a Neolithic burial site in France, dated to about 5100 BC although it was also used to treat brain cranial trauma . There have also been archaeological finds in South America, while in Europe trepanation
16470-521: The view that emotions are discrete, measurable, and physiologically distinct. Ekman's most influential work revolved around the finding that certain emotions appeared to be universally recognized, even in cultures that were preliterate and could not have learned associations for facial expressions through media. Another classic study found that when participants contorted their facial muscles into distinct facial expressions (for example, disgust), they reported subjective and physiological experiences that matched
16605-452: The way for animal research on emotions and the eventual determination of the neural underpinnings of emotion. More contemporary views along the evolutionary psychology spectrum posit that both basic emotions and social emotions evolved to motivate (social) behaviors that were adaptive in the ancestral environment. Emotion is an essential part of any human decision-making and planning, and the famous distinction made between reason and emotion
16740-487: The word, emotions are intense feelings that are directed at someone or something. On the other hand, emotion can be used to refer to states that are mild (as in annoyed or content) and to states that are not directed at anything (as in anxiety and depression). One line of research looks at the meaning of the word emotion in everyday language and finds that this usage is rather different from that in academic discourse. In practical terms, Joseph LeDoux has defined emotions as
16875-473: Was 4 years old. The 1940s saw a rapid expansion of psychosurgery, in spite of the fact that it involved a significant risk of death and severe personality changes. By the end of the decade, up to 5000 psychosurgical operations were being carried out annually in the US. In 1949, Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine . Beginning in the 1940s various new techniques were designed in
17010-404: Was adopted and further developed by scholasticism and Thomas Aquinas in particular. In Chinese antiquity, excessive emotion was believed to cause damage to qi , which in turn, damages the vital organs. The four humors theory made popular by Hippocrates contributed to the study of emotion in the same way that it did for medicine . In the early 11th century, Avicenna theorized about
17145-518: Was called leucotomy in the United Kingdom. In spite of the award of the Nobel prize to Moniz in 1949, the use of psychosurgery declined during the 1950s. By the 1970s the standard Freeman-Watts type of operation was very rare, but other forms of psychosurgery, although used on a much smaller scale, survived. Some countries have abandoned psychosurgery altogether; in others, for example the US and
17280-567: Was carried out in classical and medieval times. The first systematic attempt at psychosurgery is commonly attributed to the Swiss psychiatrist Gottlieb Burckhardt . In December 1888 Burckhardt operated on the brains of six patients (one of whom died a few days after the operation) at the Préfargier Asylum, cutting out a piece of cerebral cortex . He presented the results at the Berlin Medical Congress and published
17415-463: Was conducted by the Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz who, during the mid-1930s, developed the operation known as leucotomy. The practice was enthusiastically taken up in the United States by the neuropsychiatrist Walter Freeman and the neurosurgeon James W. Watts who devised what became the standard prefrontal procedure and named their operative technique lobotomy , although the operation
17550-460: Was generally not friendly but a few psychiatrists, notably in Italy and the US, were inspired to experiment for themselves. In the US, psychosurgery was taken up and zealously promoted by neurologist Walter Freeman and neurosurgeon James Watts . They started a psychosurgery program at George Washington University in 1936, first using Moniz's method but then devised a method of their own in which
17685-444: Was left with long-term frontal psychobehavioral changes and fatigue. One patient, aged 75, was left mute and akinetic for a month following surgery and then developed dementia . In China, psychosurgical operations which make a lesion in the nucleus accumbens are used in the treatment of drug and alcohol dependence. Psychosurgery is also used in the treatment of schizophrenia, depression, and other mental disorders. Psychosurgery
17820-672: Was not performed in England between the late 1990s and 2009, although a couple of hospitals have been experimenting with DBS. In 2010, Frenchay Hospital in Bristol performed an anterior cingulotomy on a woman who had previously undergone DBS. In Russia in 1998 the Institute of the Human Brain ( Russian Academy of Sciences ) started a programme of stereotactic cingulotomy for the treatment of drug addiction. About 85 people, all under
17955-502: Was originally defined by Paul Broca as a series of cortical structures surrounding the boundary between the cerebral hemispheres and the brainstem . The name "limbic" comes from the Latin word for the border, limbus , and these structures were known together as the limbic lobe . Further studies began to associate these areas with emotional and motivational processes and linked them to subcortical components that were then grouped into
18090-542: Was responsible for introducing the operation into mainstream psychiatric practice. He also coined the term psychosurgery. Moniz developed a theory that people with mental illnesses, particularly "obsessive and melancholic cases", had a disorder of the synapses which allowed unhealthy thoughts to circulate continuously in their brains. Moniz hoped that by surgically interrupting pathways in their brain he could encourage new healthier synaptic connections. In November 1935, under Moniz's direction, surgeon Pedro Almeida Lima drilled
18225-466: Was scared". The issue with the James–Lange theory is that of causation (bodily states causing emotions and being a priori ), not that of the bodily influences on emotional experience (which can be argued and is still quite prevalent today in biofeedback studies and embodiment theory). Although mostly abandoned in its original form, Tim Dalgleish argues that most contemporary neuroscientists have embraced
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