The Evolution of the Emotion-Processing Mind

The Evolution of the Emotion-Processing Mind
Author: Robert Langs
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2019-05-20
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429920687

In attempting to unify psychoanalytic and evolutionary theories, Langs offers a concise account of the most current versions of Darwinian and neo-Darwinian theory. He then develops the arguement that the emotion processing mind is an organ of adaptation that has evolved by natural selection.

The Evolution of the Emotion-processing Mind

The Evolution of the Emotion-processing Mind
Author: Robert Langs
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 223
Release: 1996
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9781855751248

In attempting to unify psychoanalytic and evolutionary theories, Langs offers a concise account of the most current versions of Darwinian and neo-Darwinian theory. He then develops the arguement that the emotion processing mind is an organ of adaptation that has evolved by natural selection.

How Emotions Are Made

How Emotions Are Made
Author: Lisa Feldman Barrett
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2017-03-07
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0544129962

Preeminent psychologist Lisa Barrett lays out how the brain constructs emotions in a way that could revolutionize psychology, health care, the legal system, and our understanding of the human mind. “Fascinating . . . A thought-provoking journey into emotion science.”—The Wall Street Journal “A singular book, remarkable for the freshness of its ideas and the boldness and clarity with which they are presented.”—Scientific American “A brilliant and original book on the science of emotion, by the deepest thinker about this topic since Darwin.”—Daniel Gilbert, best-selling author of Stumbling on Happiness The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology. Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose research overturns the long-standing belief that emotions are automatic, universal, and hardwired in different brain regions. Instead, Barrett shows, we construct each instance of emotion through a unique interplay of brain, body, and culture. A lucid report from the cutting edge of emotion science, How Emotions Are Made reveals the profound real-world consequences of this breakthrough for everything from neuroscience and medicine to the legal system and even national security, laying bare the immense implications of our latest and most intimate scientific revolution.

The Evolution of Emotion

The Evolution of Emotion
Author: Paul F. Kisak
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 594
Release: 2016-04-29
Genre:
ISBN: 9781533011602

The study of the evolution of emotions dates back to the 19th century and has come to be known as "sensusology." Evolution and natural selection has been applied to the study of human communication, mainly by Charles Darwin in his 1872 work, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Darwin researched the expression of emotions in an effort to support his theory of evolution. He proposed that much like other traits found in animals, emotions also evolved and were adapted over time. His work looked at not only facial expressions in animals and specifically humans, but attempted to point out parallels between behaviors in humans and other animals. According to modern evolutionary theory, different emotions evolved at different times. Primal emotions, such as fear, are associated with ancient parts of the brain and presumably evolved among our premammal ancestors. Filial emotions, such as a human mother's love for her offspring, seem to have evolved among early mammals. Social emotions, such as guilt and pride, evolved among social primates. Sometimes, a more recently evolved part of the brain moderates an older part of the brain, such as when the cortex moderates the amygdala's fear response. Evolutionary psychologists consider human emotions to be best adapted to the life our ancestors led in nomadic foraging bands.

The Cognitive-Emotional Brain

The Cognitive-Emotional Brain
Author: Luiz Pessoa
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2013-10-04
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0262019566

A study that goes beyond the debate over functional specialization to describe the ways that emotion and cognition interact and are integrated in the brain. The idea that a specific brain circuit constitutes the emotional brain (and its corollary, that cognition resides elsewhere) shaped thinking about emotion and the brain for many years. Recent behavioral, neuropsychological, neuroanatomy, and neuroimaging research, however, suggests that emotion interacts with cognition in the brain. In this book, Luiz Pessoa moves beyond the debate over functional specialization, describing the many ways that emotion and cognition interact and are integrated in the brain. The amygdala is often viewed as the quintessential emotional region of the brain, but Pessoa reviews findings revealing that many of its functions contribute to attention and decision making, critical components of cognitive functions. He counters the idea of a subcortical pathway to the amygdala for affective visual stimuli with an alternate framework, the multiple waves model. Citing research on reward and motivation, Pessoa also proposes the dual competition model, which explains emotional and motivational processing in terms of their influence on competition processes at both perceptual and executive function levels. He considers the broader issue of structure-function mappings, and examines anatomical features of several regions often associated with emotional processing, highlighting their connectivity properties. As new theoretical frameworks of distributed processing evolve, Pessoa concludes, a truly dynamic network view of the brain will emerge, in which "emotion" and "cognition" may be used as labels in the context of certain behaviors, but will not map cleanly into compartmentalized pieces of the brain.

Feeling & Knowing

Feeling & Knowing
Author: Antonio Damasio
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2021-10-26
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1524747564

From one of the world’s leading neuroscientists: a succinct, illuminating, wholly engaging investigation of how biology, neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence have given us the tools to unlock the mysteries of human consciousness “One thrilling insight after another ... Damasio has succeeded brilliantly in narrowing the gap between body and mind.” —The New York Times Book Review In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life. In the forty-eight brief chapters of Feeling & Knowing, and in writing that remains faithful to our intuitive sense of what feeling and experiencing are about, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large. He combines the latest discoveries in various sciences with philosophy and discusses his original research, which has transformed our understanding of the brain and human behavior. Here is an indispensable guide to understand­ing how we experience the world within and around us and find our place in the universe.

Active Inference

Active Inference
Author: Thomas Parr
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2022-03-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0262362287

The first comprehensive treatment of active inference, an integrative perspective on brain, cognition, and behavior used across multiple disciplines. Active inference is a way of understanding sentient behavior—a theory that characterizes perception, planning, and action in terms of probabilistic inference. Developed by theoretical neuroscientist Karl Friston over years of groundbreaking research, active inference provides an integrated perspective on brain, cognition, and behavior that is increasingly used across multiple disciplines including neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. Active inference puts the action into perception. This book offers the first comprehensive treatment of active inference, covering theory, applications, and cognitive domains. Active inference is a “first principles” approach to understanding behavior and the brain, framed in terms of a single imperative to minimize free energy. The book emphasizes the implications of the free energy principle for understanding how the brain works. It first introduces active inference both conceptually and formally, contextualizing it within current theories of cognition. It then provides specific examples of computational models that use active inference to explain such cognitive phenomena as perception, attention, memory, and planning.

Descartes' Error

Descartes' Error
Author: Antonio Damasio
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2005-09-27
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 014303622X

Since Descartes famously proclaimed, "I think, therefore I am," science has often overlooked emotions as the source of a person’s true being. Even modern neuroscience has tended, until recently, to concentrate on the cognitive aspects of brain function, disregarding emotions. This attitude began to change with the publication of Descartes’ Error in 1995. Antonio Damasio—"one of the world’s leading neurologists" (The New York Times)—challenged traditional ideas about the connection between emotions and rationality. In this wondrously engaging book, Damasio takes the reader on a journey of scientific discovery through a series of case studies, demonstrating what many of us have long suspected: emotions are not a luxury, they are essential to rational thinking and to normal social behavior.

A Mind So Rare

A Mind So Rare
Author: Merlin Donald
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2002
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780393323191

Donald (psychology, Queen's University, Canada) challenges the prevailing view that seeks to explain away human consciousness and presents a theory on the origins of the modern mind. He describes the cultural and neuronal forces that power human modes of awareness, and proposes that the human mind is a hybrid product of the interweaving of the brain with an invisible symbolic web of culture to form a "distributed" cognitive network. Using evidence from brain and behavioral studies of humans and animals, he explains how an expansion of consciousness transcends the limitations of the mammalian mind, and elaborates the foundations of self-evaluation and self-reflection. c. Book News Inc.

Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotion

Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotion
Author: Richard D. Lane
Publisher: Series in Affective Science
Total Pages: 458
Release: 2000
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780195155921

This book, a member of the Series in Affective Science, is a unique interdisciplinary sequence of articles on the cognitive neuroscience of emotion by some of the most well-known researchers in the area. It explores what is known about cognitive processes in emotion at the same time it reviews the processes and anatomical structures involved in emotion, determining whether there is something about emotion and its neural substrates that requires they be studied as a separate domain. Divided into four major focal points and presenting research that has been performed in the last decade, this book covers the process of emotion generation, the functions of amygdala, the conscious experience of emotion, and emotion regulation and dysregulation. Collectively, the chapters constitute a broad but selective survey of current knowledge about emotion and the brain, and they all address the close association between cognitive and emotional processes. By bringing together diverse strands of investigation with the aim of documenting current understanding of how emotion is instantiated in the brain, this book will be of use to scientists, researchers, and advanced students of psychology and neuroscience.