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The subjective experience of emotion: a fearful view
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We argue that subjective emotional experience, the feeling, is the essence of an emotion, and that objective manifestations in behavior and in body or brain physiology are, at best, indirect indicators of these inner experiences. As a result, the most direct way to assess conscious emotional feelings is through verbal self-report. This creates a methodological barrier to studies of conscious feelings in animals. While the behavioral and physiological responses are not 'emotions,' they contribute to emotions indirectly, and sometimes profoundly. Whether non-verbal animals have emotional experiences is a difficult, maybe impossible, question to answer in the positive or negative. But because behavioral and physiological responses are important contributors to emotions, and the circuits underlying these are highly conserved, studies of animals have an important role in understanding how emotions are expressed and regulated in the brain. Conflation of circuits that directly give rise to conscious emotional feelings with circuits that indirectly influences these conscious feelings has hampered progress in efforts to understand emotions, and also to understand and to develop treatments for emotional disorders. Recognition of differences in these circuits will allow research in animals to have a lasting impact on understanding of human emotions as research goes forward.
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“It has been argued that such different-level processes do not necessarily have to contribute to the same conscious emotional state (cf. LeDoux and Hofmann, 2018).”
From Aversive response to uncertainty as a mediator for the effect of a mindfulness intervention on symptoms of anxiety (2022) · cites this paper as LeDoux and Hofmann, 2018
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“In theoretical work on emotional consciousness, LeDoux and colleagues argue that lower-order responses can contribute to, but are not necessary for, the conscious experience of any emotional cognitive state (LeDoux & Brown, 2017;LeDoux & Hofmann, 2018).”
From Responding to uncertain threat: A potential mediator for the effect of mindfulness on anxiety (2021) · cites this paper as LeDoux & Hofmann, 2018
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Metadata
- Authors
- LeDoux, J. E., & Hofmann, S. G.
- Affiliations
- New York University (US)
- Boston University (US)
- Corresponding author
- LeDoux, Joseph E
- Venue
- Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2018-02
- Volume
- 19
- Pages
- 67-72
- ISSN
- 2352-1546 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC11444666
- OpenAlex
- W2770664338
- Cited by
- 268
- References
- 81
- Citations by year
- 2026: 28 · 2025: 39 · 2024: 31 · 2023: 41 · 2022: 37 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 35 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 14
- FWCI
- 2.94
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Radboud Repository (Radboud University) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Wellcome Trust (203730/Z/16/Z, BB/N019814/1, 203139)
- Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (452-13-015)
- Directorate for Biological Sciences
- Medical Research Council (G0902373, MR/L009013/1)
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/N019814/1)
- National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (R01AT007257)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- subjective emotional experience, fear, emotional circuits, emotional disorders
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