eBook The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life epub

I wished I had read this book years ago! It is a comprehensive, and easy-to-read review of everything we know about emotion. Rather than simply regurgitating knowledge, Ledoux takes your hand on a stroll through others’ research and his own to understand what emotions are and how they affect behavior. Ledoux critiques to how cognitive scientists have minimized the role of emotions are on point. It is appalling how, despite this book coming out in the 90s, some authors still ignore the appraising nature of emotions.

Joseph LeDoux' illustrated The Emotional Brain explains why we can't think clearly when flooded with emotion, and many other mysteries. The book is scholarly and covers a tremendous range of research not only on emotion but also on brain evolution, thought, and memory. If you wonder how emotion evolved and how it works in animals and humans, this is a must-read book. I learned so many new concepts and some of these challenged my prior beliefs about how emotions control thought and action. The book shines a light on origins of mood-related psychiatric disorders. Carve out a chunk of time for The Emotional Brain, because it is a solid course in neurobiology.

The book is probably great, but I actually had to scan through the reference list to finally find that this is indeed not a new book, but the old 1998 edition- probably unchanged. The "2015" publication date probably just refers to Kindle publication date. When you have to go to the reference list to find out when this edition of the book really is from, it is highly misleading. Do not be fooled- this is the 1998 book.

Very thorough book, but a very thick read. I haven’t struggled through such stiff language since my grad school days. Very interesting subject matter, but in no way a light read.

This book opened my understanding to the fundamental core of emotion in the human animal. Anyone who still thinks that we are primarily thinking beings, needs to read what the neuroscience of today has discovered.The degree to which we operate with emotions and not reason and logic is humbling and ...at times, frightening. Well written, lucid, and a highly engaging read.

I read ledoux's books in reverse. I read the "synaptic self" first and then "the emotional brain". I recommend that order. the emotional brain basically defines and describes what we will label as the PAPEZ / LEDOUX EMOTIONAL CIRCUIT. that's what the book is about . you will need to carefully read from page 1 - 170. he makes the papez circuit completely understandable and then "adds" his circuit. it's better than his second major work, "the synaptic self"; but they are both excellent. read this one for sure. easily 5 stars and then some.

I am a Psychology major and I found this to be one of the most important works in the field. This has changed the direction of psychology. It explains how humans are more emotional beings than they are rational beings. I would recommend this book to every single person to understand our own thoughts, and those of others.

This book, funded by the Neuroscience Research Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health of America, certainly doesn't fall into the category of pop science; rather it is a thorough and systematic piece of research, which includes original experiments as well as a summary of the scientific literature on this subject. As a general reader I found it quite a slog, but I am glad I bought it as it is an original work which is cited by others.

LeDoux chose fear as the main subject of his study of emotions. He gave various reasons for this:

* Fear is pervasive.
* Fear plays an important role in psychopathology.
* Fear is expressed similarly in humans and other animals.

These factors provided LeDoux with ample source material for his reseach which included his own experiments on animal brains and studies about the removal of parts of the brain of human epileptic patients.

For me his most fascinating discussion was about our primitive brain- in LeDoux's words - "we are emotional lizards" - meaning we detect and respond to fear in the same way as all vertebrate animals. When faced with a frightening situation we freeze, our heart rate accelerates and muscles contract. Stress hormones are released into the bloodstream and reflexes are heightened. One interesting and merciful point about the fear reaction is that it is virtually impossible to feel strong fear and pain at the same time, as when we are frightened our sensitivity to pain is greatly diminished. I was also interested to read that the "lizard" brain has its own memory - traumatic experiences which zap straight from the thalamus to the amygdala may never reach the cortex, with its conscious awareness.

The lizard brain is our fastest and most primitive pathway for responding to fear, with messages sent straight from the thalamus to the amygdala. However a second pathway goes from the thalamus to the cortex to the amygdala, a slightly indirect pattern which appears to be unique to humans and other primates.

The cortex, which is our centre of consciousness and language, helps us to understand a threat and consider how we might deal with it. Thanks to the cortex we can be proactive as well as reactive. However, since it is slower to react than the more instinctual lizard brain, it is obviously handy to have both. It is interesting to note that people who are very anxious from birth tend to have a thicker cortex than others - presumably from trying to rationalize and cope with their anxiety, a form of fear.

LeDoux poses the question - "where is evolution taking our brain?" He speculates that as humans move further up the evolutionary chain, our minds could develop increased connectivity between the amygdala and cortex which would lead to a more harmonious balance between reason and passion.

Given LeDoux' scholarly approach, I was surprised to discover one major mistake. He described the "wild pig" phenomena observed among the Gururumba "a horticultural people living in the highlands of New Zealand." As a New Zealander I can say that if there are such people, it is an incredibly well kept secret! I can only presume that these people come from another country, perhaps one of our Pacific neighbours.

One other minor quibble about the book is the low quality cardboard used for the cover which is so flimsy it curls around and gives no protection to the pages. It is possibly the worst quality book cover I have ever come across and does a disservice to the publisher Simon and Schuster.