The Experience of Emotion

“A number of studies in which American and Japanese samples rated their experience on English and Japanese words (and their translations) have yielded a dimension of social engagement versus disengagement (e.g., Kitayama et al. 2000, Markus & Kitayama 1991).”

“…strong evidence of a common core of pleasant and unpleasant feelings (Barrett & Russell 1998; Boyle 1986; Feldman 1993, 1995a; Mayer & Gaschke 1988; Russell 1980; Watson & Clark 1994; Watson & Tellegen 1985; Zuckerman & Lubin 1985) (for reviews, see Barrett 2006c, Barrett & Russell 1999, Russell &…”

“Our meta-analytic findings were relatively more consistent with the psychological operations that we have considered ingredients of emotion here and in other papers (e.g., Barrett 2006b; 2009; Barrett et al. 2007a; Kober et al. 2008; Lindquist & Barrett 2008a; Wager et al. 2008).”

“Next, the individual appraises a stimulus’s emotional significance, and this triggers an affective, physiological and behavioral response (Scherer et al. 2001; Barrett et al. 2007).”

“The mental representations are usually based on culturally shared concepts, and the categorization is thought to occur via online processing as individuals become conscious of their emotional experiences ( Barrett et al., 2007 ).”

“Viewed this way, subjective reward experience may be partly synthesized from motivation and cognitive appraisal components, similar to many other emotions (Barrett et al., 2007).”

“This finding, and the individuals results on which it is based, have been taken to suggest that the amygdala may play a role in the perceptual detection and encoding of affectively relevant stimuli, which may or may not have a direct impact on affective experience (Anderson and Phelps, 2001, 2002; Barret et al., 2007;…”

“…of his core affect theory) by Russell [19], a review of facial and vocal communication of emotion also by Russell [20], a critical review on the theory of basic emotions and a review on the experience of emotion by Barrett [21], [22], and a review of affective neuroscience by Dalgleish et al. [23].”

“This makes classical appraisal theories highly doubtful, because they assume that a response derives from a stimulus that is evaluated for its meaning (e.g. Lazarus, 1991; Scherer, 2009; Roseman, 2011; for a discussion, see (Barrett et al., 2007b; Gross and Barrett, 2011).”

“…cortex also has valenced representations of taste and other hedonic stimuli, which could aid higher cognitive processes in guiding complex motivational and emotional behavior (Barrett et al. 2007b; Davidson et al. 2003; Kringelbach et al. 2004; Kringelbach and Rolls 2004; Wallis and Miller 2003).”

“This makes defining emotion difficult, with the result that there is no single, agreed upon definition of an emotional response (e.g., Ekman and Davidson, 1994).”

“…propose it as an innovation (e.g. Anderson and Adolphs, 2014), even as evidence continues to call it into doubt (e.g. Barrett, 2006a, 2016b, 2012; Barrett et al., 2007a; see Table 1 for specific neuroscience examples, with a particular focus on fear as the category that has garnered the most…”

“Self-reports carry information about a person’s internal state (1, 9) and correlate with other psychological processes that are thought to be emotion-related, such as expressive behavior (60–63).”

“” Both classic (3) and more recent (4, 5) models of emotional processing assume that subjective emotional feelings are triggered by the perception of emotion-related bodily states that reflect changes in the skeletomuscular, neuroendocrine, and autonomic nervous systems (1).”

“It specifies whether something is good or bad for me, informed by prior experience and current context (Arnold, 1960; Barrett et al., 2007; Barrett, Wilson-Mendenhall, & Barsalou, 2014; Brosch & Sander, 2013; Cunningham & Zelazo, 2007; Ellsworth & Scherer, 2003; Lazarus & Smith, 1988; Moors et al.,…”

“…emotions, are the core building blocks of all emotional experience, are underpinned by specific brain systems and serve important adaptive functions such as the control of approach and avoidance behaviour (e.g. Watson et al. 1999; Carver 2001; Posner et al. 2005; Barrett 2006; Barrett et al. 2007).”

“In psychological theories of emotion, valence (antithesis) and arousal (intensity) are taken to be essential features of all emotions, and ones that define what in the psychological literature is referred to as “core affect” (Russell, 2003; Barrett et al, 2007) (Fig.”

“Because the content of emotion is inaccessible in nonhuman subjects, and is outside the scope of this article (but see Barrett et al. [ 15 ]), the term ‘emotion’ is used here for reactions to stimuli, including autonomic and skeletal motor ones.”

“An experience of emotion is a state of mind the content of which is at once affective (pleasant or unpleasant) and conceptual (a representation of the individual relation to the surrounding world) [Barrett et al., 2007].”

“…interconnected cortical and subcortical brain areas that are not functionally specific to affect, but that realize affective responses as a network (for imaging evidence, see Kringelbach & Rolls 2004; Barrett et al. 2007a; Wager et al. 2008; for a discussion, see Barrett & Bliss-Moreau in press).”

“The third hypothesized advantage of MM systems stems from the fact that UM affect detectors are inherently noisy since the link between specific signals and affective states is tenuous at best [Barrett et al. 2007; Russell et al. 2003].”

“Implicit emotion, or bodily felt sensations, can be transformed into discrete conscious experiences of specific emotions or feelings by putting the felt sensations into words (Barrett et al. 2007; Lane 2008).”

“Presumably, the addition of further cortical territory into the representation of fear in humans allows for much more nuanced and elaborate experiences of fear [14].”

“Core affect is universal to all humans (Mesquita, 2003 ; Russell, 1983 ; Scherer, 1997 ; Wierzbicka, 1992 ), is evident in all instrument-based measures of emotion (see Barrett, 2006 , for a review), and forms the “core” of emotion experience (Barrett, 2006 ; Barrett, Mesquita, Ochsner, & Gross, 2007 ; Russell, 2003 ).”

“The study of the psychological experience of emotion and of the neural basis of emotion and its relation to other mental processes is a solid scientific enterprise (Barrett et al. 2007, Phelps 2006) and its importance in complex social institutions undeniable (Brief & Weiss 2002).”

“…(Cannon, 1927) or too undifferentiated (Schachter and Singer, 1962) to support emotional states, and that these states must instead be " constructed " based on top-down (and likely linguistic ) information about goals, contexts, and the like (Barrett et al., 2007a, 2007b; Scherer et al., 2001).”

“Note that, most generally, different emotions engage different peripheral and central mechanisms, with specific engagement varying across stimuli and contexts (Barrett, Mesquita, Ochsner, & Gross, 2007 ).”

“... reports of emotional experience), (2) studies that assess perception(recognition) of affective stimuli (eg, presenting pictures of faces and assessing accuracy of emotion expression identification), (3) naturalistic studies that assess emotion in participants’ natural environments (eg, assessing emotional experien…”

“Prior studies have linked the medial frontal cortex with the subjective feelings of emotions (Barrett et al. 2007; Etkin et al. 2011; Herbert et al. 2011; Satpute et al. 2012) and self-awareness (Lane et al.”

“Thus, subjective experience of musical pleasure, similar to emotions (74), may arise from motivational signals and cognitive appraisal rather than through the engagement of the hedonic hotspots previously identified with primary rewards.”

“These complex emotions can vary in numerous aspects, including arousal, as well as relational and situational content (e.g., Barrett et al., 2007).”

“…research, including now extensive fMRI investigations, the jury is still just out, but few now are confident that strong evidence for discrete affects and innate discrete affect programs will be found (for meta-reviews see Barrett et al., 2007; Cacioppo et al., 2000; Daum et al., 2009).”

“Not unlike what has been proposed for the experience of core affect in emotion (38, 39), this circuit includes four”

“, amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, and posterior cingulated cortex) consistently linked to social and emotional processing (Adolphs, 2002; Amodio and Frith, 2006; Barrett et al., 2007; Lieberman, 2007; Phelps, 2006; Phillips et al., 2003; Zald, 2003) is associated with the amount of assigned punishment during legal…”

“…with interoceptive awareness/insight (Critchley, 2005; Critchley et al., 2004), a sense of the " feeling self " (Craig, 2009), core affect (Barrett et al., 2007), the subjective experience of emotions such as pain, sadness, anxiety and disgust (Liotti et al., 2000), and the capacity to…”

“…the conceptual act model (Barrett, 2005, 2006b, 2006c, in press; Barrett & Bar, 2009; Barrett & Bliss-Moreau, 2009; Barrett & Lindquist, 2008; Barrett et al., 2007a; Barrett, Lindquist, & Gendron, 2007b; Barrett, Mesquita, Ochsner, & Gross, 2007c; Barrett et al., 2007d; Duncan & Barrett,…”

“Physical processes of emotion (e.g. firing of neurons) are different than emotional content (e.g. feeling pain), and only with a description of the content (or what one feels) can scientists know what they need to explain (Barrett et al. 2007, 374).”

“…that increased awareness of bodily sensations, thoughts and emotions before the emotional event [reflected in PFC activations in the expectation phase (compare Barrett et al., 2007)] influenced emotion generation such that emotional reactivity was dampened when the emotional stimulus appeared.”

“…the existence of a human affect system that foundationally evaluates the motivational significance of environmental stimuli, resulting in appetitive and aversive motivational activation, which ultimately produces emotional experience, affective feelings, and attitudes (Barrett et al. 2007).”

“…the explosion of brain imaging techniques has further advanced our understanding of how the brain responds when someone is experiencing emotion (Barrett et al. 2007), and taken together, we now know a great deal about emotional behavior and perception as well as the neural underpinnings in…”

“Affective neuroscience has shown how positive and negative survival-related stimuli selectively capture attention, elicit core affects, and are available for conscious appraisal [87,88].”

“Although relatively little is known about how attention affects interoception (cf. Barrett et al., 2007), interoceptive and exteroceptive stimuli are often thought to utilize and compete for the same limited attentional resources (Vaitl, 1996).”

“[40,41] Barrett et al.[31] outline the most prominent structures that have been identified as central during the evaluation of the emotional significance of stimulus events and the processes that lead to the emergence of the emotional experience.”

“105 Brain structures involved in the neural circuitry of cognition in-fluence emotion and vice versa.”

“…neuroaesthetics, researchers argue that there is a certain connection between human aesthetic experience and the sensation caused by visual stimuli regardless of source, culture, and experience [6], which is supported by activations in specific regions of the visual cortex [7], [8], [9], [10].”

“…that regions of the brain that underlie the experience of affect, emotion, pleasure and reward might be responsive to opennessdthe reverse of perceived enclosure (see Barrett et al., 2007; Barrett & Wager, 2006; Berridge & Kringelbach, 2009; Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2014; Kringelbach, 2005).”

“Similarly, brain structures involved in the neural circuitry for cognition, such as dorsomedial and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (DMPFC and VLPFC), have an intrinsic role in the experience of emotion (Barrett et al., 2007).”

“This is expected because affect can never be divorced from context (Barrett et al. 2007; Russell 2003).”

“Subjective experience is thought to be a core ingredient to the construct of emotion (Barrett et al., 2007), but it remains unclear whether it should be considered key to the construct of motivation as well.”