Neurobiology of emotion

Welcome to the Wikiversity learning project about the neurobiology of emotion. This is a learn by doing project where participants collaborate to explore what neuroscience research has revealed about the biology of emotion.

Fear
Journalist Charlie Rose hosts The Brain Series.
Neuroscientist Eric Kandel co-hosts The Brain Series.
António Damásio is one of the guests on The Brain Series.
Robotic simulation of emotional responses. See the article by Chaminade et al.
A cortical brain region (white area indicated by the green arrow) with activity that is associated with disgust in humans, from Jabbi et al. 2008. Panels b, c and d show patterns of activity induced by thinking about digust, seeing someone who was disgusted and drinking a disgusting liquid.

This project is starting with a literature review, so please add useful links to this page and participate in discussion of previously published research.

Reading

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If you are not familiar with the major brain regions that have been associated with emotions then start with the introductory reading, below.

Introductory

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Video: Charlie Rose: The Brain Series, particularly episode seven on the role that emotions play in decision making and social interaction, and episode eight, part two of the emotional brain, dealing with negative emotions such as fear and anxiety. (transcripts also available)

Textbook. Start with the 2001 Neuroscience textbook by Dale Purves, et al. and read the case study about patient "SM" then read other sections of the textbook chapter about emotion:

Published research by scientists such as António Damásio is cited and discussed in the Neuroscience textbook by Dale Purves, et al.

Research literature

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If you are new to study of the neurobiology of emotion you might want to start by reading some review articles before looking at the detailed data reports.

Recent review articles

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Primary research articles

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Discussion

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This page section is for discussion of recently published articles about the neurobiology of emotion.

Specific brain regions involved in emotion

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In "What does the amygdala contribute to social cognition?", it is suggested that the amygdala plays a role in allowing humans to understand the emotions of others, particularly when we look at faces. Is the subject SM a representative experimental subject? --JWSchmidt 09:11, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Decety & Moriguchi cite additional patients with limbic system damage and altered emotions (cases N.M and N.K.). --JWSchmidt 17:52, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Kuraoka & Nakamura recorded from individual neurons and showed that there are neurons in the monkey amygdala that respond to either facial or vocal emotional stimuli. Jabbi et al. studied humans using fMRI and observed that anterior insular cortex was active when test subjects either 1) saw others look disgusted or 2) tasted unpleasant liquids to induce disgust or 3) read and imagine scenarios involving disgust. Such experiments suggest that limbic system components including the amygdala and insular cortex contain neurons with activity patterns corresponding to the generation of core emotional responses that can be elicited by several different types of stimuli. --JWSchmidt 16:58, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

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