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Feelings: What Are They & How Does the Brain Make Them?

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Feelings: What Are They & How Does the Brain Make Them? Feelings: What Are They & How Does the Brain Make Them? Joseph E. LeDoux Abstract: Traditionally, we de½ne “emotions” as feelings and “feelings” as conscious experiences. Conscious experiences are not readily studied in animals. However, animal research is essential to understanding the brain mechanisms underlying psychological function. So how can we make study mechanisms related to emotion in animals? I argue that our approach to this topic has been flawed and propose a way out of the dilemma: to separate processes that control so-called emotional behavior from the processes that give rise to conscious feelings (these are often assumed to be products of the same brain system). I will use research on fear to explain the way that I and many others have studied fear in the laboratory, and then turn to the deep roots of what is typically called fear behavior (but is more appropriately called defensive behavior). I will illustrate how the processes that control defensive behavior do not necessarily result in con - scious feelings in people. I conclude that brain mechanisms that detect and respond to threats non-consciously contribute to, but are not the same as, mechanisms that give rise to conscious feelings of fear. This dis- tinction has important implications for fear and anxiety disorders, since symptoms based on non-conscious and conscious processes may be vulnerable to different factors and subject to different forms of treatment. The human mind has two fundamental psycholog - ical motifs. Descartes’s proclamation, “I think, there - fore I am,”1 illustrates one, while Melville’s state - ment, “Ahab never thinks, he just feels, feels, feels,” exempli½es the other.2 Our Rationalist incli na tions make us want certainty (objective truth), while the JOSEPH E LEDOUX . , a Fellow of the Romantic in us basks in emotional subjectivity. Psy - American Academy since 2006, is chology and neuroscience recognize this distinction: the Henry and Lucy Moses Profes- sor of Science at New York Univer- cognition and emotion are the two ma jor categories sity. He is the author of the books of mind that researchers study. But things were not Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become always quite like this. Who We Are (2002), The Emotional Rational thought has always been treated as a pro d - Brain (1996), and Anxious: Using the uct of the mind, and emotions were traditionally Brain to Better Understand and Treat viewed as belonging to the body.3 Descartes, follow - Fear and Anxiety (forthcoming July ing Plato’s lead, said that humans differ from animals 2015). He has published research in such publications as Nature, Neuron, in that we have a rational mind (a soul), but are sim - and The Journal of Neuroscience, and ilar to animals in that we have bodily passions (emo - was elected to the National Acade- tions) that interfere with reason. Somewhere along my of Sciences in 2013. the way, two things happened to give us our more © 2015 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences doi: 10.1162/DAED_a_00319 96 integrated modern view. First, we began fore as separate from feelings), thus avoid - Joseph E. to consider human emotions as mental ing questions about consciousness in ani- LeDoux states; and second, many began to attrib- mals.8 Others argued, in the tradition of ute mental states, including both thoughts Darwin, that humans inherited emotional and feelings, to animals. Darwin, for exam - states of mind from animals, and that be - ple, viewed emotions as “states of mind,” havioral responses give evidence that these some of which are shared by both humans states of mind exist in animal brains.9 The and other animals.4 Today, emotions are ½rst approach has practical advantages, commonly conceived of as mental states since it focuses research on objective re - that are felt (consciously experienced) sponses of the body and brain, but suffers when well-being is affected in some way: from the fact that it ignores what most we feel fear when threatened, anger when people would say is the essence of an emo - frustrated, joy when things go well, sadness tion: the conscious feeling. The second when we lose a friend or loved one, and ap proach puts feelings front and center, compassion when we see someone suf fer. but is based on assumptions about mental If we assume that emotions are feelings, states in animals that cannot easily be veri - that feelings are states of consciousness, ½ed scienti½cally. and that states of consciousness are inner When I was getting started in my stud- private experiences predicated on the ies of emotion in animals in the mid-1980s, aware ness of one’s own mental activity, I adopted a third approach to try to get questions arise about the scienti½c study around these problems.10 I treated emo- of the brain mechanisms underlying emo - tions in terms of essentially non-conscious tions in animals. Emotions and other states brain states that connect signi½cant stim- of consciousness can–within limits and uli with response mechanisms, and feelings with some dif½culty–be studied in hu - as conscious experiences arising from these mans, but the study of consciousness in non-conscious brain states.11 My theory, animals is, to put it mildly, challenging.5 therefore, emphasized the importance of At the same time, due to ethical and tech- feelings, but I argued that the brain mech - nical limits of investigations in humans, anisms that control emotional responses work on detailed brain mechanisms of and those that generate conscious feelings emo tion depends on animal research. How are separate. By separating processes that do we get around this stumbling block?6 non-consciously detect and respond to signi½cant stimuli from those that create Behaviorism, which flourished in the ½rst feelings, emotional mechanisms could be half of the twentieth century, is a school studied in animals without having to solve of thought in psychology that rejects the the problem of whether animals feel emo - study of conscious experience in favor of tion, while at the same time honoring the objectively measurable events (such as re - importance of feelings in the human mind sponses to stimuli). Due to behaviorism’s and brain. influence, researchers interested in emo- I have used this strategy for many years tion in animals have tended to take one of in my research on fear in animals, focusing two approaches. Some have treated emo- on the mechanisms that detect threatening tion as a brain state that connects exter- stimuli and orchestrate defensive respons- nal stimuli with responses.7 These re - es to deal with the danger.12 The purpose search ers, for the most part, viewed such of this strategy has not been to deny that brain states as operating without the ne - feelings or other states of consciousness cessity of conscious awareness (and there - exist in animals, but instead to focus re - 144 (1) Winter 2015 97 Feelings: search on questions that can be addressed the terms, using them interchangeably to What Are scienti½cally, regardless of how the ani- refer to the mental states that people ex - They & How Does mal consciousness debate turns out. In the perience when they face situations in the Brain meantime, since feelings are an essential which survival is challenged or enhanced. Make Them? fac tor in human mental life and in psychi - In the remainder of this essay I use the atric disorders that afflict humans, con- emotion of fear as an example of the points scious feelings can and should be studied I want to make. I ½rst explain the way that in humans. Further, because circuits that I and many others have studied fear in the operate non-consciously to control emo- laboratory, and then turn to the deep roots tional responses nevertheless contribute of what I long called fear behavior (but to feelings in humans, research on these now call defensive behavior, as explained same circuits in animals is relevant to hu - below). I offer a different way of talking man feelings. about fear and other mental states.16 I con - clude by discussing my view about what As useful as the strategy has been, there con scious feelings are, how they relate to has always been something awkward about non-conscious pro cess es, and how they the scienti½c separation of emotion (a non- come about in the brain. conscious response process) from feeling –the conscious experience of emotion. It A staple in laboratory studies of fear and is messy, since the terms emotion and feel- its underlying brain mechanisms has been ing are typically used interchangeably in a procedure called Pavlovian fear condition- everyday speech. There is no require- ing.17 (I prefer to use the more neutral term ment that scienti½c language conform to Pavlovian threat conditioning to circumvent lay meaning (and in fact some argue that aforementioned problems associated with a language of science will replace lay discussing “fear” in animals.)18 In threat terms);13 but when the terms in question conditioning, an insigni½cant stimulus, are about mental states that we all experi- such as a tone, occurs in conjunction with ence and talk about, it is harder to escape an aversive stimulus, typically footshock. the compelling pull of the vernacular.14 Through this pairing, the tone by it self This is one challenge psychology faces that eventually acquires the ability to elicit most other sciences do not. freezing behavior (a defensive anti-pred- In an effort to grapple with this termi- ator behavior in which the animal remains nological uneasiness, I began rethinking motionless for the purpose of avoiding de - the way we use words like emotions and tection or minimizing attack)19 and sup - feelings.15 This led me to consider the nat - porting physiological responses (such as ural history of what we have been calling changes in heart rate, blood pressure, and emotion in animals, a journey that led me other autonomic nervous system adjust- to conclude that the roots of so-called ments) that help the organism cope with emotional behavior are so deep, so old, that the impending danger.
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