Check Point Emotions
Biopsychological research on emotions has concentrated on fear in this chapter not because biopsychologists are a scary bunch, but because fear has three important qualities: It is the easiest emotion to infer from behavior in various species; it plays an important adaptive function in motivating the avoidance of threatening situations; and chronic fear induces stress (Pinel, 2011). Darwin argued, largely on the basis of anecdotal evidence, which particular emotional responses, such as human facial expressions, tend to accompany the same emotional states in all members of a species. He developed a theory of the evolution of emotional expression that was composed of three main ideas: 1. Expressions of emotion evolve from behaviors that indicate what an animal is likely to do next. 2. If the signals provided by such behaviors benefit the animal that displays them, they will evolve in ways that enhance their communicative function, and their original function may be lost. 3. Opposite messages are often signaled by opposite movements and postures, an idea called the principle of antithesis (Pinel, 2011). This leads us to the James-Lange theory.
According to the James-Lange theory, emotion-inducing sensory stimuli are received and interpreted by the cortex, which triggers changes in the visceral organs via the autonomic nervous system and in the skeletal muscles via the somatic nervous system (Pinel, 2011).. James and Lange argued that the autonomic activity and behavior that are triggered by the emotional event (e.g., rapid heartbeat and running away) produce the feeling of emotion, not the other way around. Cannon-Bard gives their theory.
According to the Cannon-Bard theory which promoted and extended the James-Lange theory, emotional stimuli have two independent excitatory effects: They excite both the feeling of emotion in the brain and the expression of emotion in the autonomic and somatic nervous systems. That is, the Cannon-Bard theory, in contrast to the James-Lange theory, views emotional experience and emotional expression as parallel processes that have no direct causal relation Pinel, 2011). This would lead to the Limbic System. In 1937, Papez proposed that emotional expression is controlled by several interconnected

nuclei and tracts that ring the thalamus (Pinel, 2011). The limbic system (limbic means

“border”): the amygdala, mammillary body, hippocampus, fornix, cortex of the cingulate gyrus,

septum, olfactory bulb, and hypothalamus. Emotional states are expressed through the action of

the other structures of the circuit on the hypothalamus and that they are experienced through

their action on the cortex. Papez’s theory of emotion was revised and expanded by Paul

MacLean in 1952 and became the influential limbic system theory of emotion (Pinel, 2011).

In conclusion failure to find unqualified support for either the James-Lange or the

Cannon-Bard theory led to the modern biopsychological view. According to this view, each of

the three principal factors in an emotional response—the perception of the emotion-inducing

stimulus, the autonomic and somatic responses to the stimulus, and the experience of the

emotion—can influence the other two (Pinel, 2011).

Reference

Pinel, J. P.J. (2011). Biopsychology (8th Ed.). Retrieved from Boston M.A: Pearson.