The Emotions - Emotions Definition

Written by Ilan Shalif, Ph.D.

The integrations done during the input and the advanced steps of processing have a topographic (or geographic) facet. Part of the steps or aspects of the processing can be related to large parts of or to almost the entire brain. Part can be related to small or large neurological paths and areas. Specific parts of the processing can be located in small neurological structures, in a small group of neurons or even in a particular neuron.

Process products that reach awareness are usually the result of the simultaneous activity of many regions or nearly all of the brain. Only complicated and ingenious tactics can succeed in the task of isolating stages, or in the effort to relate them to regions.

The emotions (sometimes called moods, feelings, sensations, subjective experience, passions and their like), that are the subjects of this book, are also processes of the brain. They too have specific neuronal paths and organization centers for their main facets. They too involve fresh input and recycled ones (including previous processions of them) stored as memory traces, which they integrate at various levels.

For instance, the processes of the fear emotion can be engaged by inputs from receptors of the same sense located at different part of the body - as in unexpected pain signals. Fear can be aroused by inputs of various senses like seeing danger or hearing a threat or feeling the loss of balance. It can involve recycled input of previous processing about the measure in which a specific person or event is dangerous, as it caused harm in the past.

It can also involve all these in combination and higher level processes, like thinking and imagery. It is typically so in the evaluation of a specific situation in the present or the future, that has no similar precedents - according to its components, circumstance and/or the probability of its development and transformation.

The same principle, but with more complex integrations, is expressed in movement. The regular daily walking in the house from one room to another - which is relatively simple when the lights are on - is based on the input of the eyes, the ears, kinesthetic inputs of the muscles, the sense of balance, memory of the environment and furniture arrangement, and knowledge of the neighbors' windows, our clothing, our curtains and our sensitivity of being spied on.

Usually, this kind of movement does not involve the emotional subsystem to any great degree. However, when the movement is part of a dance at a ball, with a partner who is a stranger and whom we are courting - and the dance is not one we know too well - it will surely involve the emotional subsystem to a great measure. A whole book will be needed to describe the relevant processing of the input done by the brain* and the various subsystems involved.

*Since the relationship between the mind and the brain is a bit blurred, it is worth clearing up the use of the concepts of brain and mind in this book. They are used here essentially as two main aspects of what our head is about.

It is known that the acts of thinking, perceiving, learning, remembering, feeling, believing and the like are the main aspects of the mind. It is also known that those are, at the same time, products of processes mainly done in the brain.

The relationship between the mind and brain can be likened to that which exists between the bicycle and the rider as a physical entity, and the act of traveling.

The basic emotions

Many scientists label certain processes in the brain as "Basic Emotions1". Each of them is based, to a large extent, on its own specific multi-neuronal structure. These structures are part of the "Limbic System", which is the mammals' "old brain". The basic emotions are in essence the modern heir of Descartes' "Primary Passions of the Mind". Mixtures of these basic emotions are the apparent emotions of daily life. (Established beyond any reasonable doubt by scientific studies.)

These emotions are basic in the same sense that the colors red, blue and yellow are basic colors. They are so called because by mixing them one can create any other color and shade. The "Basic Emotions" are called basic since they cannot be composed by any mixture of the others.

The relation between observed emotions and basic emotions, resemble the relationship between simple chemical mixtures of air, sea water and soil. Like the substances of the compounds, the contribution of each basic emotion is relatively independent of those of the others. Like the chemical elements of the compounds which are rarely found by themselves in natural condition, so it is with basic emotions. When one needs them in a relatively pure condition, one must use laboratories or other artificial conditions and interventions.

In principle, each instance of emotional phenomena can be broken into its main components or in other words, it can be discerned which of the basic emotions contribute most to its emergence and expression. Actually, we often discern with relative ease the weight of the three most prominent basic emotions at a given moment. Though a difficult and impractical process, each of the emotional phenomena can be broken down to reveal the relative contribution of each of its basic components (i.e. the contribution of each of the basic emotions to its emergence).

Each of the neuronal structures which form the strata of a basic emotion involves several subsystems and processes. These are responsible for the six main functions or aspects of each of the basic emotions. The most prominent one is the experiential aspect, which is the source of the name of emotional phenomena in many languages.

This aspect is the main "interface" between the unaware, swift and short duration changes of the basic strata of emotions, and the processes of awareness and consciousness. The other aspects and components are that of perception, integration, intra-organismic responses, behavior and expression.