Approaches to Emotion: Experimentation in Neuroscience and Historical Interpretation

Taking as my starting point the 2012 article by Lindquist et al., “The Brain Basis of Emotion: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Behavior and Brain Science 35(2012):121-143, as well as the 28 comments that followed the article, I will propose that advances in brain imaging are gradually undermining any simple, physiology-based or subcortical-based answer to the question, “What is emotion?” As Luis Pessoa remarks in his comment, “the architectural features of the brain are such that they provide massive opportunity for cognitive-emotional interactions ... [brain] networks themselves are best conceptualized as neither ‘cognitive’ nor ‘emotional.’” As a result, the cultural and historical variability both of “emotional experience,” as educated westerners currently define it, and of its various correlates or equivalents as defined in other traditions, increases in importance. So does the need for an adequate interpretive method for approaching emotional experience. Indeed, Lindquist et al. argue for what they call “psychological constructionism,” a concept that opens the door wide for cultural historians to come to their aid.