A multiprocess perspective on the neuroscience of emotion.

During the past century, neuroscientists and psychologists have viewed emotion through different lenses. According to many contemporary psychologists our emotions are a product of the way in which we interpret the world. On this view, the way we think about, or appraise, the significance of an event determines whether it will make us happy or sad, angry or glad. The same stimulus, such as your brother punching you in the arm, will have an entirely different meaning depending upon whether his action seems deliberately harmful or playfully affectionate. How you respond to his punch will be determined by how you interpret its' meaning. The goal of this research is to identify how appraisal patterns give rise to complexities of emotional experience, expression, and regulation (e. In contrast, neuroscientists have viewed emotions as expressions of inherited programs for action in specific situations that have been of importance to humans and related species for millions of years (e.g. Panksepp, 1998). On this view, complex emotions are learned responses to primary reinforcers that have been built on top of these simple and prepotent response tendencies (e.g. Rolls, 1999). The goal of research is to identify the neural systems responsible for the basic responses of fear, rage, disgust, affiliation, and so on. Although some researchers acknowledge that neural systems carry out some simple forms of appraisal (e.g. for fear, see LeDoux, 1996), by and large, neuroscience theories simply don't speak to the issue of how complex person-situation relationships determine what feelings will be elicited. Which view is correct? Are emotions the product of complex cognitive appraisals or are they the product of simple programs embedded in our genes and brains? This is the crux of the conflict between psychology and neuroscience as it traditionally has been understood, and debates Neuroscience of Emotion 2 over this and related issues have been the source of much consideration (for discussion see Ekman and Davidson, 1994; LeDoux, 1996). A complete account of emotion, however, should make reference to all levels of analysis, ranging from the feelings and behaviors associated with emotion to how they are computed at the neural level of brain structures and systems. The purpose of this chapter is to begin sketching a theoretical framework that bridges these levels. We begin with the view that this conflict is more apparent than real by arguing that psychological and neuroscience approaches are asking complimentary questions about emotion couched …