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Feelings: What Are They & How Does the Brain Make Them?

LeDoux, Joseph E.·2015·Daedalus
DOI 10.1162/daed_a_00319
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Abstract

Traditionally, we define “emotions” as feelings and “feelings” as conscious experiences. Conscious experiences are not readily studied in animals. However, animal research is essential to understanding the brain mechanisms underlying psychological function. So how can we make study mechanisms related to emotion in animals? I argue that our approach to this topic has been flawed and propose a way out of the dilemma: to separate processes that control so-called emotional behavior from the processes that give rise to conscious feelings (these are often assumed to be products of the same brain system). I will use research on fear to explain the way that I and many others have studied fear in the laboratory, and then turn to the deep roots of what is typically called fear behavior (but is more appropriately called defensive behavior). I will illustrate how the processes that control defensive behavior do not necessarily result in conscious feelings in people. I conclude that brain mechanisms that detect and respond to threats non-consciously contribute to, but are not the same as, mechanisms that give rise to conscious feelings of fear. This distinction has important implications for fear and anxiety disorders, since symptoms based on non-conscious and conscious processes may be vulnerable to different factors and subject to different forms of treatment.

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  • The term feeling is often used incorrectly as a synonym for emotion and vice versa.

    “Consequently, the term feeling is often used incorrectly as a synonym for emotion and vice versa (LeDoux, 2015;Munezero et al., 2014).”

    From Physiological feelings (2019) · cites this paper as LeDoux, 2015

    The Abstract says that emotion and feeling are typically used interchangeably in everyday speech, but it does not call that usage incorrect. LeDoux explicitly says he uses the terms interchangeably rather than differentiating between them, contrary to the claim's characterization. (LLM, conf=0.86)

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  • Feelings are not emotions per se, which tend to be more complex, and feelings are not limited to those that co-occur with specific emotions.

    “But feelings are not emotions per se (LeDoux, 2015) which tend to be more complex (Fontaine et al., 2007), and feelings are not limited to those that co-occur with specific emotions.”

    From Physiological feelings (2019) · cites this paper as LeDoux, 2015

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Research works printed but not linked: 68

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Authors
LeDoux, J. E.
Affiliations
JOSEPH E. LEDOUX, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2006, is the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at New York University. He is the author of the books Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are (2002), The Emotional Brain (1996), and Anxious: Using the Brain to Better Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (forthcoming July 2015). He has published research in such publications as Nature, Neuron, and The Journal of Neuroscience, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2013.
Venue
Daedalus
Publisher
MIT Press
Published
2015-01
Volume
144
Issue
1
Pages
96-111
ISSN
  • 0011-5266
  • 1548-6192
DOI
10.1162/daed_a_00319
Cited by
35
References
9
Language
en

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