In an interesting article in 2012 the neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux pointed out that there had been an explosion of scientific articles on emotion between the 1960s and the first decade of the 21st century but, “the term ‘emotion’ is not well defined in most publications.” He goes on to say: “Perhaps this is not surprising since there is little consensus about what emotion is, and how it differs from other aspects of mind and behavior, in spite of discussion and debate that dates back to the earliest days of modern biology and psychology.” (p. 653)
He points out that we use, “feeling words” to talk about emotions, words like, “fear, anger, love, sadness, jealousy, and so on” and goes on to note that a number of authors have questioned the wisdom of using common language words that refer to feelings as means of classifying and studying human emotions (and the even more serious potential difficulties of applying these words/concepts to nonhuman species).
He suggests, as an alternative, “a way of conceiving phenomena important to the study of emotion, but with minimal recourse to the terms emotion or feeling. The focus is instead on circuits that instantiate functions that allow organisms to service and thrive by detecting and responding to challenges and opportunities. Included, at a minimum, are circuits involved in defense, maintenance of energy and nutritional supplies, fluid balance, thermoregulation, and reproduction.” (p. 654). He argues that these neurocircuits are, “conserved to a significant degree in across mammalian speci3s, including humans. While there are species-specific aspects of these functions, there are also core components of these functions that are shared by all mammals” (p. 654).
LeDoux notes that while neuroscientists assume specific emotional/motivational circuits are innately wired into the brain by evolution and that these mediate functions that contribute to survival and well-being of organism, there is a major controversy about whether there are innate emotion circuits in the human brain: “This debate is centered on the question of whether emotions are ‘natural kinds’ of things that exist in nature as opposed to being inventions (constructions) of the human mind” (p. 654).
Contemporary theories recognize between 5 and 7 basic or primary emotions. Ekman’s list of 6 is an example: fear, anger, happiness, sadness, disgust, surprise.
Basic emotions view has been challenged:
- Different theories have different numbers of basic emotions, and different names for similar emotions
- Questions have been raised about the methods used to identify basic emotions
- Lack of coherence of the phenomena that constitute individual emotions
- Diversity of states to which a given emotion label can refer
- The main basic emotion theory based on brain research (Panksepp, 1998, 2005) lists emotions that do not match up well with Ekman or others
Barrett (2006a; Barrett et al., 2007) is a recent challenger to basic emotion theories:
- Much evidence based on older techniques that lack precision
- Basic emotions identified in animals do not map onto human categories
- Evidence from human imaging studies show similar brain areas activated in response to stimuli associated with different basic emotions
LeDoux disagrees with the last point: current imaging does not have resolution necessary to conclude that the similarity of activation in different states means similar neural mechanisms,
But concur that the current evidence for dedicated neural circuits is weak, “This does not mean that the mammalian brain lacks innate circuits that mediate fundamental phenomena relevant to emotion. It means that emotions, as defined in the context of basic emotions theory, may not be the best way to conceive of the relevant innate circuits.”
Survival circuits
The body is a highly integrated system, consisting of multiple subsystems working in concert to sustain life.
A major function of the brain is to coordinate the activity of the systems.
An important category of life-sustaining brain functions are those achieved thought behavioral interactions with the environment. These survival circuits include, at a minimum, circuits involved in defense, maintenance of energy and nutritional supplies, fluid balance, thermoregulation, and reproduction.
Survival circuits have been conserved from primordial mechanisms present in early life forms. The survival circuits do not align well with basic human emotions.
He notes: there is no anger/aggression circuit.
Aggression is not a unitary state with a single neural representation. Distinct forms of aggression (conspecific, defensive, and predatory aggression) might be effectively segregated by the context in which the aggression occurs: “defensive circuitry (aggression in an attempt to protect one’s self from harm); reproductive circuitry (aggression related to competition for mates); feeding circuitry (predatory aggression toward prey species).” (p. 655). Also, a joy/pleasure/happiness kind of circuit is not listed: behaviors used to index joy/pleasure/happiness are instead treated products of specific circuits involved in energy and nutrition, fluid balance, procreation, thermoregulation, etc. By focusing on the subjective state, joy/pleasure/happiness, emotion theories tend to glass over the underlying details of emotional processing for the sake of converging on a single word that symbolizes diverse underlying states mediated by different kinds of circuits.” (p. 655).
LeDoux recognizes that survival circuits idea may need to be refined: “For example, it is unlikely that there is a single unified defense or reproductive circuit.” (p. 655).
“Survival circuits help organism survive and thrive by organizing brain functions. When activated, specific kinds of responses rise in priority, other activities are inhibited, the brain and body are aroused, attention is focused on relevant environmental and internal stimuli, , motivational systems are engaged, learning occurs, and memories are formed” (p. 655).
He considers the role of both innate and learned relationships in survival circuits, the issue of whether motivation is a generic process or specific to each survival circuit. The multiple roles “emotional” stimuli can play (trigger stimulus for survival circuit, incentive, reinforcer). He considers the relationship between survival circuits and human feelings:
“Ingredients of Feelings in a Cognitive Workspace
An emotional feeling is hypothesized to be a representation of a global organismic state initiated by an external stimulus. The representation includes sensory information about the stimulus and the social and physical context, information about the survival circuit that is active, information about CNS arousal, body feedback information, and mnemonic information about the stimulus situation and the state itself. When such a global organismic state is categorized and labeled a conscious feeling of a certain type (e.g. a feeling of fear, pleasure, degust, etc.) results. To the extent that any of these components differ in human and nonhuman species, the nature of the resulting state would differ as well.” (p. 666).
LeDoux argues that the survival circuit concept provides a conceptualization of important phenomena relevant to the topic of emotion without assuming the phenomena are the same or similar to what people refer to when the use emotion words to characterize subjective emotional feelings. He expands on this idea further in his recent book (2019).