Autonomic Expression Of Emotion

Autonomic Expression of Emotion is the first book to form a functional definition of the mind-brain connection in relation to emotional expression. The body's expression of emotion-from laughing to crying to experiencing stress or anxiety-requires a response from the autonomic nervous system. Without modulation of respiration, vocalization, cardiovascular activity, pain receptors, and urinary responses, no emotional expression is possible. While emotional control is within the purview of the limbic system, autonomic control lies within the brainstem. Neuroscience research typically addresses these areas as two separate entities, rather than examining them in unison. Autonomic Expression of Emotion thoroughly examines this relationship, and provides comprehensive coverage of the neurons, circuits, and control mechanisms through which the limbic and autonomic systems interact to produce emotional expression.

The mind and body are intrinsically and dynamically coupled. Perceptions, thoughts and feelings change, and respond to, the state of the body. This chapter describes the integration of cognitive and affective processes with the autonomic control of bodily arousal, focusing on reciprocal effects of autonomic responses on decision making, error detection, memory and emotions. Neuroimaging techniques are beginning to detail the neuronal substrates mediating these interactions between mental and physiological states, implicating cortical regions (specifically insular and cingulate cortices) alongside subcortical (amygdala) and brainstem (notably dorsal pons) in these mechanisms. The extent to which bodily states influence mental processes is determined in part by “interoceptive sensitivity,” an index of individual differences in the ability to detect one’s own bodily sensations. Moreover, the misidentification or misattribution of interoceptive responses is implicated in a number of pathologies such as depersonalization, schizophrenia, and anxiety. Increasing knowledge of the mechanisms of body–mind interactions has wide ranging implications, from decision making to empathy, and may serve elucidate potential avenues of intervention for stress-sensitive conditions in which psychological, cognitive, and emotional factors impact on the expression of physical symptoms.

This sourcebook is intended as a reader in the fullest sense of that word: a work that offers researchers and students alike the opportunity to examine the many different aspects and widely divergent approaches to the study of emotion. The contributors include samples of biological, ontogenetic, ethological, psychological, sociological, and anthropological approaches.

This chapter briefly describes the general goals of the book, introduces the most fundamental features of the methodology that is employed to achieve these goals, and gives an outline of the structure of the book. A more detailed account of the goals and methodology is presented in chapters 2 and 3, respectively. What the Book Is About The main objective of this study is to attempt to answer the question: How do people understand their emotions? As we shall see in the next chapter, a large number of scholars have tried to provide answers to this question. The interest in the way people understand their emotions has led scholars to the issue of the nature of emotion concepts and emotional meaning. Since the notion of understanding involves or presupposes the notions of concept and meaning, it was only natural for scholars with an interest in the way people understand their emotions to tum their attention to emo tion concepts and the meaning associated with emotion terms. So the broader issue has often become more specific. For example, Davitz in his The Language of Emotion formulated the central question in the following way: "What does a person mean when he says someone is happy or angry or sad?" (Davitz 1969: 1).

In order to better understand how emotion processes contribute to children's broader self-regulatory abilities, the interrelations among the multiple components of emotion need to be better understood. While some aspects of emotional events are difficult to observe in young children, such as their cognitive appraisals of emotions, other aspects are more easily observable. Expressions of emotion, attempts to regulate emotions, and physiological changes that may accompany both types of behavior are important aspects of emotional events. However, how these components interact and especially, how they unfold over time, is not well understood. For example, while prior work has emphasized physiological reactivity, little is known about physiological recovery processes in children. Using anger inductions as a context for examining these questions, the present research examined four overarching goals using a longitudinal sample. First, dynamic patterns of autonomic reactivity and recovery in response to anger were documented. At 3.5 years, children showed reactivity in both autonomic branches and low recovery. At 6 years, children showed sympathetic reactivity and strong recovery. Second, these studies examined links between these physiological patterns and individual differences in emotion regulation capabilities. We found that, at 3.5 years, both emotion expressions and emotion regulation were associated with physiology. Regulation strategies that reflected engagement were associated with greater reactivity and recovery, and greater sympathetic recovery was also associated with mother-reported global emotion regulation. In contrast, strategies that reflected disengagement were associated with less reactivity but greater arousal in recovery. Third, we examined whether these links between physiology and emotion behaviors changed with age, and found that disengagement continued to be associated with less autonomic reactivity at 6 years. Fourth, these links were examined longitudinally. Prospective analyses showed that physiological responses at 3.5 years predicted emotion behaviors at 6 years, and vice versa, suggesting that the links between these constructs occur via bidirectional transactions over development. Together, these findings support a complex and multi-faceted model of the development of children's emotion expression and regulation, of which autonomic recovery processes appear to be an important component.

The outgrowth of a University of Chicago conference on the psychological and biological bases of behavior, this unique collection of papers integrates the biological consideration of emotion with current psychological approaches. As such, it includes studies of the coping process associated with emotion as well as those that focus on the appraisal process giving rise to emotion. The book approaches emotion from cognitive, developmental, and biological systems and psychopathological perspectives. Theories on the cognitive, biological, and developmental bases for interpreting, representing, and reacting to emotional situations are proposed. In addition, new studies on issues and questions regarding the roles of cognition, language, brain lateralization, socialization, psychopathology, and coping with affect are presented.

One hundred stereotype maps glazed with the most exquisite human prejudice, especially collected for you by Yanko Tsvetkov, author of the viral Mapping Stereotypes project. Satire and cartography rarely come in a single package but in the Atlas of Prejudice they successfully blend in a work of art that is both funny and thought-provoking. The book is based on Mapping Stereotypes, Yanko Tsvetkov's critically acclaimed project that became a viral Internet sensation in 2009. A reliable weapon against bigots of all kinds, it serves as an inexhaustible source of much needed argumentation and-occasionally-as a nice slab of paper that can be used to smack them across the face whenever reasoning becomes utterly impossible. The Complete Collection version of the Atlas contains all maps from the previously published two volumes and adds twenty five new ones, wrapping the best-selling series in a single extended edition.