Where The Wild Things Are: In Search of Neuroscience of Emotions.
- Ana
- Jul 16
- 10 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
Looking For the Seat of Emotions.
Everyone knows what emotions are until they are asked to define them.
Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ignore.
(The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.)
Blaise Pascal
What Did Emotions Ever Do For Me?
Emotions get me into a lot of trouble. But I love my emotions. Yet, when I try to explain why, I struggle.
Is it because they make me feel alive?
Because they reveal that some things matter far more than they may seem to?
Because they push me to act, even in situations where I would rather not?
For me, my emotions show me what is my heart's desire. A compass of sorts. But then again, someone else might have a very different relationship with their emotions. They may experience emotions as something darker, a negative force. A shadow hanging over them. Or any other number of things.
As such, we already can see that emotions are not the same thing for everyone. They are shaped by the context of our biological makeup and our personal histories, as well as by our belonging to a particular human 'tribe' (our culture).
For sure, we experience emotions, but where and how?
Are emotions in the body? Yes. Are emotions in the brain? Yes.
Are emotions innate? Yes. Are emotions learned? Yes.
Emotions are paradoxical. They are wild and bewildering.
Psychotherapy And Emotions
To me, emotions are absolutely central to therapy. Thinking and cognitive reappraisal may play a role, and can indeed come in handy at times, but only insofar as they allow emotions to be changed, processed, or in some way tempered. However one approaches it, emotions are to me the undisputed sovereign in the therapeutic process. They are the boss of my therapy world.
But why? It is a million-dollar question, and probably as difficult to answer as the question of what emotions actually are. To begin with, 'working with emotions' in therapy can mean many different things. Here are some examples that come to my mind.
We pay attention to the emotions in therapy. We pay them respect.
As therapists, I think, that is why we feel that need to attend to them. We want our clients to feel they can express their emotions.
There is also a sense that all strong emotions fundamentally carry a meaning and that our job is to help the client bring that meaning to their awareness. So we work with the meaning of emotions.
But then we also work with regulation of emotions. In other ways finding ways to modulate emotions volitionally, whether through reappraisal, co-regulation or using the body.
We also work with reconsolidation of emotions. Changing how strong the emotional memory about something is.
And the list could go on. As I said, to me, emotions are central to therapy. For that reason, for me it is so interesting to explore the neuroscience of emotions. But the question is: which neuroscience of emotions?
What Are Emotions? The Big Theories of Emotions
The problem is...not only emotions are wild. The debates within the field of affective neuroscience about what emotions are, are actually pretty wild too.
Today, there are two dominant lines of thought regarding how emotions should be understood. One considers emotions as innate biological expressions, while the other takes a post-modern view of sorts, seeing emotions as, in essence, shaped by culture and supported by brain's capacity to learn. However, before we explore these perspectives, it is worth revisiting a seminal bifurcation in thinking about emotions that occurred in the early days of neuroscience.
Oldies But Goldies: James-Lange Vs. Cannon-Bard Theories of Emotions
These classic and opposing theories, dating back to the early twentieth century and the beginnings of experimental neuroscience, may no longer hold practical value in contemporary research. New and more nuanced theories have since emerged.
However, I find them genuinely thought-provoking when reflecting on the nature of emotions. We cane boil down the two views to the following question is answered:
"Do you run away from the bear because you are afraid, or are you afraid because you are running away from the bear?"
According to the Cannon–Bard theory, we run away from the bear because we are afraid. In this view, the conscious and subjective experience of emotion is independent of bodily physiological responses. Emotion can occur without preceding physiological arousal.
In contrast, the James–Lange theory argues the opposite: we are afraid of the bear because we are running away. In this view, emotion arises as a consequence of the body’s physiological arousal. The feeling of fear, for instance, is the mind’s interpretation of bodily states such as increased heart rate and muscle tension.
I shall leave it to you to decide where you stand in this debate, but one important takeaway for me here is that the echoes of this debate are still felt in the modern theories of emotion but also in how we think about emotions in therapy. I find that typically clients come with (unknowingly to them) Cannon-Bard view and I see my job as shifting them more towards James-Lange view.
The Classic Theory of Emotions: the Basic Emotion
This view contends that a set of basic emotions is innate and that all the other more complex emotions arise as a combination of these hard-wired basic emotions, shaped by evolutionary needs. The idea here is that each one of these basic emotions evolved with a specific brain circuity and was adapted to a specific, 'primordial threats', so to speak.
The typical basic emotions, according to this view, would be: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. And each one of these basic emotions corresponds to a dedicated neural circuitry or a module.
I feel that this view is still very much utilised in psychotehrapy circles.
These theories typically stem from animal research that is then extrapolated and consolidated to human emotions.
It is said that these theories deal first and foremost with emotions as opposed to feelings.
According to this distinction, an emotion is an objective, physical state and the felt experience of that state. Feelings, on the other hand would be, the conscious and elaborated experience of that emotion.
Killer argument: Intuitive. Simple. Continuity between non-human and human animals.
Weak spot: Driven by research on animals - lacking the humanistic perspective and broader cultural considerations. How much can be translated?
Emotional value: old school( a bit sedate)
Theory of Constructed Emotions (TCE)
The theory of constructed emotion takes a whole different and unexpected approach to the question of what emotions are. It can be described as a paradigm shift , and truth be told, it is probably one of the reasons I find it so compelling.
To begin with, the theory of constructed emotion challenges what was long considered a universally accepted premise: that all emotions possess distinct neural and physiological 'fingerprints', and that these fingerprints are also reflected in recognisable and universally expressed facial configurations for each core emotion. To the theory of constructed emotions, we learn emotions through culture; they are not hard-wired at birth or determined by genetics. What is hard-wired, rather, is the capacity to remain open to experience and to learn emotional responses from our environment. Emotions are constructed through our ongoing adaptation to the world around us and to the fulfilment of our needs within that environment.
Emotions: Active Inference Framework And Maintaining Homeostasis Through Allostasis
To explain further the shift in perspective brought about by the theory of constructed emotion, allow me to take a brief detour. In my post The Devil You Know: The Free Energy Principle and Psychotherapy I discussed the active inference framework. Within this framework, the brain is conceived as a predictive 'device' that uses the sensory channels available to the organism and, crucially, past experience, to anticipate the future needs of the organism. It adjusts the organism’s expectations and moment-to-moment state - both body and mind - accordingly.
Importantly, in this view, the organism is not a passive recipient of information but an active agent that participates in shaping its environment.
When we speak of these moment-to-moment adjustments in response to the ever-changing external and internal conditions of the organism, we are effectively referring to the concept of allostasis. The brain's role, according to this model, is to maintain homeostasis (state of internal equilibrium) through allostasis, by drawing upon prior experiences and current information about both the external world and the body’s internal environment.
According to the theory of constructed emotion, emotions are the conscious interpretation of interoceptive signals from the body. Emotions are the meanings we attribute to the interoceptive signals of the body that end up reaching our awareness. This process of choosing the interoceptive signals and assigning an interpretation would all be conducted according to the principle of brain as active inference.
I kind of think of this in the following way: the body is constantly reacting to the environment - and, to be fair, also to our thoughts - and at the same time it exists in a particular state. That state might involve fatigue, hunger, discomfort, or any number of physiological conditions. Depending on all of these parameters, our “next step” - the action we choose to take - will be influenced by the combined effect of the body’s state, the external context, and the conscious processes of thinking and decision-making.
Now, the body does not possess language in the same way that thinking does. It cannot “speak” in a literal sense, and so I see emotions as the way in which the implicit signals from the body become available to conscious awareness and cognitive apparatus of the brain. This, in turn, opens up a whole new swaths of possibilities and problem-solving capacities when attending to a given situation.
One example that helped me personally to get my head around these ideas is the experience of a jittery, restless sensation in the body. Imagine: high sympathetic arousal, a loss of appetite, butterflies in the stomach. What is this? For me, it could be excitement. It could be infatuation. It could be anxiety. The underlying bodily state is identical, yet the meaning we give it depends entirely on context and on personal history.
Killer argument: Changing the 'meaning' changes emotion.
Weak spot: The evolutionary link between animal emotions (which are bound to be circuitry based) and human emotions.
Emotional value: super exciting
Brain On Emotions
Hopefully, by now (if you follow my writing at all), we can agree on the following:
Emotions are not in the amygdala
Emotions are not to be found in one area of the brain
Emotions are not in the limbic system or any other brain 'layer' per se (contrary to the ideas of the Triune Brain Theory)
Alright then, where are emotions in the brain?
In fact, both the classic theories of emotions (basic emotions) and the theory of constructed emotions agree on the fact that emotions are a distributed phenomenon in the brain. I think the difference is that they don't agree how distributed they are (specific circuitry per basic emotions for the former and domain-general for the latter). And therefore, the answer to our question will depend on who we ask.
Nonetheless, we can still examine the brain regions that are most commonly studied in relation to human emotions and they are as follows:
the insula - deep sucortical structure that is considered to be a hub for interoception and processing complex social emotions such as emotional pain and disgust (both gustatory and moral)
the amygdala - subcortical brain structure involved in salience detection, threat processing and emotional memory formation as well as in human sociality
the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) - subcortical structure involved in emotional processing, especially the visceral and autonomic components of emotions
ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) - area of the prefrontal cortex with strong connections to the amygdala, thought to be involved in regulation of emotions
orbitofrontal cortex - a prefrontal area of the brain that, amongst other things, seems to be implicated in motivational aspects of emotions as well as impulse control, inculcation of cultural norms, and the ability to appreciate the consequences of one’s own behaviour. Phineas Gage, one of the most famous patients in history of early neuroscience, had sustained the injury in this brain area.
Should the Wild Things Be Tamed At All? Emotions Are Cognition.
As therapists, we know how important emotions are. We work with them every day. We connect through emotions. We communicate through emotions. We find deeper meaning in experiencing emotions. Changing or understanding our emotions can be healing; it is often a watershed moment. Emotions are the spice of life, and we do not need neuroscience to tell us that.
However, perhaps neuroscience can help us shift our own paradigms of how we think and work with emotions? That would be nice.
As you have probably noticed, I am somewhat biased. I am a sucker for exciting new ideas that challenge received wisdom and the status quo, and in that sense, the theory of constructed emotions gets a clear advantage. I shall therefore be leading the witness (you), so to speak, by introducing a few ideas about how this theory could influence the way we think about and work with emotions in therapy. This is still work in progress, but here are two takeaways:
Takeaway 1 There is no pre-defined, ready-made, hard-wired set of emotions that we are to identify in our client's experience. Rather, emotions are culturally and contextually learned. As such, we need to work with the client's specific and subjective description of their emotional experience, however complex or layered it may be. Our task is to help them understand what their emotions mean for them personally, rather than attempting to mould their experience into a set of pre-existing emotional categories.
Takeaway 2 The brain is a meaning-maker, and the theory of constructed emotions tells us that emotions exist to provide meaning and access to conscious experience to the physical experiences that have no language or voice, otherwise. Unlike fixed neural circuitry, meaning can be changed - in therapy or through other life experiences. And as we change the meaning, we change the emotion. That is good news for therapy.
Through thinking about these things, I have come to understand emotions as a source of knowledge about the world that surrounds us and how we need to adjust to it. To me, therefore, emotions are cognition. Feel free to be emotional about it.
As always, thank you for reading 🙏.
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