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Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes,variously associated with thoughts,feelings,behavioral responses,and 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.
Fear is an intensely unpleasant emotion in response to perceiving or recognizing a danger or threat. Fear causes psychological changes that may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the threat. Fear in human beings may occur in response to a certain stimulus occurring in the present,or in anticipation or expectation of a future threat perceived as a risk to oneself. The fear response arises from the perception of danger leading to confrontation with or escape from/avoiding the threat,which in extreme cases of fear can be a freeze response. The fear response is also implicated in a number of mental disorders,particularly anxiety disorders.
The amygdala is a paired nuclear complex present in the cerebral hemispheres of vertebrates. It is considered part of the limbic system. In primates,it is located medially within the temporal lobes. It consists of many nuclei,each made up of further subnuclei. The subdivision most commonly made is into the basolateral,central,cortical,and medial nuclei together with the intercalated cell clusters. The amygdala has a primary role in the processing of memory,decision-making,and emotional responses. The amygdala was first identified and named by Karl Friedrich Burdach in 1822.
Affective neuroscience is the study of how the brain processes emotions. This field combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality,emotion,and mood. The basis of emotions and what emotions are remains an issue of debate within the field of affective neuroscience.
Affect,in psychology,is the underlying experience of feeling,emotion,attachment,or mood. It encompasses a wide range of emotional states and can be positive or negative. Affect is a fundamental aspect of human experience and plays a central role in many psychological theories and studies. It can be understood as a combination of three components:emotion,mood,and affectivity. In psychology,the term affect is often used interchangeably with several related terms and concepts,though each term may have slightly different nuances. These terms encompass:emotion,feeling,mood,emotional state,sentiment,affective state,emotional response,affective reactivity,disposition. Researchers and psychologists may employ specific terms based on their focus and the context of their work.
James L. McGaugh is an American neurobiologist and author working in the field of learning and memory. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at the University of California,Irvine and a fellow and founding director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.
Joseph E. LeDoux is an American neuroscientist whose research is primarily focused on survival circuits,including their impacts on emotions such as fear and anxiety. LeDoux is the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at New York University,and director of the Emotional Brain Institute,a collaboration between NYU and New York State with research sites at NYU and the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in Orangeburg,New York. He is also the lead singer and songwriter in the band The Amygdaloids.
Lisa Feldman Barrett is a Canadian-American psychologist. She is a University Distinguished Professor of psychology at Northeastern University,where she focuses on affective science and co-directs the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory. She has received both of the highest scientific honors in the field of psychology,the William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science for 2025,and the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions from the American Psychological Association for 2021. Along with James Russell,she is the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Emotion Review. Along with James Gross,she founded the Society for Affective Science.
Howard C. Nusbaum is professor at the University of Chicago,United States in the Department of Psychology and its College,and a steering committee member of the Neuroscience Institute. Nusbaum is an internationally recognized expert in cognitive psychology,speech science,and in the new field of social neuroscience. Nusbaum investigates the cognitive and neural mechanisms that mediate spoken language use,as well as language learning and the role of attention in speech perception. In addition,he investigates how we understand the meaning of music,and how cognitive and social-emotional processes interact in decision-making.
Emotion can have a powerful effect on humans and animals. Numerous studies have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be of emotional events,which are likely to be recalled more often and with more clarity and detail than neutral events.
The effects of stress on memory include interference with a person's capacity to encode memory and the ability to retrieve information. Stimuli,like stress,improved memory when it was related to learning the subject. During times of stress,the body reacts by secreting stress hormones into the bloodstream. Stress can cause acute and chronic changes in certain brain areas which can cause long-term damage. Over-secretion of stress hormones most frequently impairs long-term delayed recall memory,but can enhance short-term,immediate recall memory. This enhancement is particularly relative in emotional memory. In particular,the hippocampus,prefrontal cortex and the amygdala are affected. One class of stress hormone responsible for negatively affecting long-term,delayed recall memory is the glucocorticoids (GCs),the most notable of which is cortisol. Glucocorticoids facilitate and impair the actions of stress in the brain memory process. Cortisol is a known biomarker for stress. Under normal circumstances,the hippocampus regulates the production of cortisol through negative feedback because it has many receptors that are sensitive to these stress hormones. However,an excess of cortisol can impair the ability of the hippocampus to both encode and recall memories. These stress hormones are also hindering the hippocampus from receiving enough energy by diverting glucose levels to surrounding muscles.
Memory supports and enables social interactions in a variety of ways. In order to engage in successful social interaction,people must be able to remember how they should interact with one another,whom they have interacted with previously,and what occurred during those interactions. There are a lot of brain processes and functions that go into the application and use of memory in social interactions,as well as psychological reasoning for its importance.
Emotion perception refers to the capacities and abilities of recognizing and identifying emotions in others,in addition to biological and physiological processes involved. Emotions are typically viewed as having three components:subjective experience,physical changes,and cognitive appraisal;emotion perception is the ability to make accurate decisions about another's subjective experience by interpreting their physical changes through sensory systems responsible for converting these observed changes into mental representations. The ability to perceive emotion is believed to be both innate and subject to environmental influence and is also a critical component in social interactions. How emotion is experienced and interpreted depends on how it is perceived. Likewise,how emotion is perceived is dependent on past experiences and interpretations. Emotion can be accurately perceived in humans. Emotions can be perceived visually,audibly,through smell and also through bodily sensations and this process is believed to be different from the perception of non-emotional material.
Daniela Schiller is a neuroscientist who leads the Affective Neuroscience Lab at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She is best known for her work on memory reconsolidation,and on modification of emotional learning and memory.
Jee Hyun Kim is an Australian behavioral neuroscientist whose work focuses on emotional learning and memory during childhood and adolescence. She is a professor,ARC future fellow,and head of the Molecular Psychiatry Laboratory at the Deakin University School of Medicine,Australia
Stephen Andrew Maren is an American behavioral neuroscientist investigating the brain mechanisms of emotional memory,particularly the role context plays in the behavioral expression of fear. He has discovered brain circuits regulating context-dependent memory,including mapping functional connections between the hippocampus,prefrontal cortex,and amygdala that are involved in the expression and extinction of learned fear responses.
Elizabeth Kensinger is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston College. She is known for her research on emotion and memory over the human lifespan. She is co-author of the book Why We Forget and How To Remember Better:The Science Behind Memory,published in 2023 by Oxford University Press,which provides an overview of the psychology and neuroscience of memory. She also is the author of the book Emotional Memory Across the Adult Lifespan, which describes the selectivity of memory,i.e.,how events infused with personal significance and emotion are much more memorable than nonemotional events. This book provides an overview of research on the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying the formation and retrieval of emotional memories. Kensinger is co-author of a third book How Does Emotion Affect Attention and Memory? Attentional Capture,Tunnel Memory,and the Implications for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder with Katherine Mickley Steinmetz,which highlights the roles of emotion in determining what people pay attention to and later remember.
Valerie F. Reyna is an American psychologist and Professor of Human Development at Cornell University and an expert on false memory and risky decision making.
Catherine Hartley is an American psychologist and an Associate Professor of Psychology within the Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science at New York University in New York City. Hartley's research explores how brain development impacts the evaluation of negative experiences,decision-making,and motivated behavior. Her work has helped to elucidate how uncontrollable aversive events affect fear learning and how learning to control aversive stimuli can improve emotional resilience.
Nim Tottenham is a professor of psychology at Columbia University,where she leads the Developmental Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. Her research highlighted fundamental changes in amygdala-prefrontal cortex circuitry across childhood and adolescence and the influential role of early experiences on the developmental trajectories of these circuits.
References
- ↑ "APS Welcomes President Phelps, President-Elect Eisenberg". APS Observer. 26 (7). 2013-08-30.
- ↑ "SNE Leadership | Society For Neuroeconomics". neuroeconomics.org. Retrieved 2018-11-13.
- ↑ "Neuroethics Society Launched". www.dana.org. Retrieved 2018-11-13.
- ↑ "Elizabeth Phelps | Ohio Wesleyan University | Pride of the Bishops". Ohio Wesleyan University. Retrieved 2021-05-03.
- 1 2 "Liz Phelps". Phelps Lab of New York University.
- ↑ "Elizabeth Phelps: Brains on Trial". Brains on Trial with Alan Alda. Chedd-Angier Production Company.
- ↑ "Erasing Fears By Thinking About Them". NPR.
- ↑ Law, Bridget M. "Seared in our memories". American Psychological Association. American Psychological Association.
