Understanding Emotions: The Received View

While experiences of emotions emerge at the level of psychological description, they seem to be causally related to neurobiological processes. The exploration of the involvement of the neural system in the experience and expression of emotions has benefitted immensely by the technological innovations in the study of brain processes. A historical perspective on the scholarship in this area has brought into focus the involvement of several subcortical and cortical centers and pathways as main contributors to emotion processes. In broad terms, the dominant models of emotions include basic emotion models, appraisal models, and constructionist models. The various lines of inquiry tend to suggest that an emotion is not an entity or a distinct faculty with its distinct mechanism. While the story is still unfolding, current understanding suggests that emotions and feelings do not have an essence and there is no one-to-one correspondence between a behavior, a physiological response pattern, and an emotion word. Emotions are constructed as experiences or perceptions in which interoception also plays an important role. Emotions are categories emerging from complex dynamics within the nervous system. They emerge as the brain makes meaning of sensory inputs from the body and the external world. The implications of this view are presented.