The Emotional Brain: Physiology, Neuroanatomy, Psychology, and Emotion

274 Pages·1986·26.28 MB·English

by  P. V. Simonov (auth.)

I
r:: The.
Lmotlona
Brain
Physiology, Neuroanatomy,
Psychology, and Emotion
EMOTIONS, PERSONALITY, AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
Series Editors
Carroll E. Izard, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware
and
Jerome L. Singer, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
THE EMOTIONAL BRAIN: Physiology, Neuroanatomy,
Psychology, and Emotion
P. V. Simonov
EMOTIONS IN PERSONALITY AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Carroll E. Izard, ed.
FREUD AND MODERN PSYCHOLOGY, Volume 1: The Emotional
Basis of Mental Illness
Helen Block Lewis
FREUD AND MODERN PSYCHOLOGY, Volume 2: The Emotional
Basis of Human Behavior
Helen Block Lewis
GUIDED AFFECTIVE IMAGERY WITH CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS
Hanscarl Leuner, Gunther Horn, and Edda Klessmann
HUMAN EMOTIONS
Carroll E. Izard
THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF TIME
Bernard S. Gorman and Alden E. Wessman, eds.
THE POWER OF HUMAN IMAGINATION: New Methods
in Psychotherapy
Jerome L. Singer and Kenneth S. Pope, eds.
SHYNESS: Perspectives on Research and Treatment .
Warren H. Jones, Jonathan M. Cheek, and Stephen R. Briggs, eds.
THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Scientific Investigations into the
Flow of Human Experience
Kenneth S. Pope and Jerome L. Singer, eds.
A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery
of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual ship.
ment. For further information please contact the publisher.
Physiology, Neuroanatomy,
Psychology, and Emotion
P. V. Simonov
Director, Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Physiology
Academy of Sciences of the USSR
Moscow, USSR
Translated from Russian by
Marie J. Hall
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Simonov, P. V. (Pavel Vasil'evich)
The emotional brain.
(Emotions, personality, and psychotherapy)
Translation of: Emotsional'nyi mozg.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Emotions—Physiological aspects. 2. Brain—Localization of functions. I. Title. II.
Series. [DNLM: 1. Emotions. 2. Psychophysiology. WL 103 S599e]
QP401.S57813 1986 152.4 86-15098
ISBN 978-1-4899-0593-2
ISBN 978-1-4899-0593-2 ISBN 978-1 -4899-0591 -8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-0591-8
This translation is published under an agreement with the
Copyright Agency of the USSR (VAAP)
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 1986
Originally published by Plenum Press, New York in 1986
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1986
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
Contents
Introduction. • • 1
What Is Emotion? 9
The Reflective-Evaluative Function of Emotions • 20
The Switching Function of Emotion. •••••• 29
The Reinforcing Function of Emotion. • • • • • 33
Compensatory (Substitution) Function of Emotions • 38
The Role of Emotions in Regulating the Size, Den-
sity, and Qualitative Composition of a Population. 43
Imitative Behavior as an Example of the Compensa-
tory Function of Emotions at the Populational
Level. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• 47
The Reinforcing Function of Emotions at the Popu
lational Level: the Phenomenon of Emotional Res-
onance • 48
Analysis of Criticism of the Information Theory of
Emotions. • • • • •• ••••• •• 64
The Term "Information" as Applied to the Study
of Emotions. • • • • • • • • • . • . • • • • • 67
Traits of Similarity and the Essential Difference
between the Information Theory of Emotions and
Anokhin's "Biological Theory of Emotions" ••• 68
Are the Limitations that Critics Apply to the
Information Theory of Emotions Justified? •• 71
The Expediency of Expressing the Information
Theory in the Form of a "Formula of Emotions". 73
On the So-called "Value" of Emotions 77
The Physiology of Emotions. 80
The Effect of Emotions on the Heart. 80
v
vi CONTENTS
Electroencephalogram Changes During Human Emo
tional Reactions • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 86
Effect of Emotions on Activity (Using the
Processes of Perception as an Example 93
Speech and Mimicry • • • • • • • 102
Neuroanatomy of Emotions. • 107
Morphological Bases of Needs, Motivation, and
Emotions. Their Relative Independence • • • • 113
Significance of the Frontal Neocortex for Orien
tation of Behavior to Signals of Highly Probable
Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Participation of the Hippocampus in Reactions to
Signals of Low-Probability Events by Regulating
the Selection of Engrams Withdrawn from Memory
and the Process of Comparing Them with Present
Stimulation. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 133
The Hierarchical Organization of Coexisting Mo
tivations: an Important Function of the Amyg-
dala Complex • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 143
Behavioral Functions of the Hypothalamus • • • • 148
Interaction of Brain Structures According to the
Spatial Organization of Their Bioelectrical Poten-
tials. • • . . • • . . . . • . • • • • 151
The Need-Informational Organization of the Inte-
grative Activity of the Brain. 162
The Psychology of Emotions. • • • 166
Needs as a Basis and Moving Force in Human Behavior. 170
The Psychology of the Will • • . • • 190
Determinism and Personal Responsibility. • 199
The Conscious and the Subconscious in Artistic
Creativity • • . • • • • • • . • • • • • 205
Two Spheres of the Unconscious Psychic: the
Subconscious and the Superconscious. • • 210
"Superpurpose" of Human Behavior as a Function
of Man's Superconscious. • • • • • • • • . • • 217
Determinism and Freedom of Choice: "Removing"
the Problem. 221
Conclusion. 228
References. 234
In.dex • • • 261
Introduction
This book deals with the results of theoretical and ex
perimental studies of the emotions which my colleagues and I
carried out over the last two decades.
An interest in the psychology of emotions prompted us
to undertake an analysis of the creative legacy of K. S.
Stanislavsky. A result of this analysis was the book, The
Method of K. s. StanisZavsky and the PhysioZogy of Emotions,
written in 1955-1956 and published by the Academy of Sciences
of the USSR in 1962. I am grateful to the first reader and
critic of the manuscript, Leon Abgarovich Orbeli. In 1960,
having transferred to the Institute of Higher Nervous Activ
ity and Neurophysiology of the Academy of Sciences of the
USSR, I had the opportunity to conduct experiments on prob
lems that had interested me for a long time. In close scien
tific association with Peter Mikhailovich Ershov, director
and teacher of theater, I began a systematic study of the in
voluntary and electrophysiological shifts in actors during
voluntary production of various emotional states.
Here comparatively quickly we became convinced that the
fruitfulness of such studies rests on an absence of any kind
of developed, systematic, and sound generaZ theory of the
emotions of man and the higher mammals. We will illustrate
our difficulties if only with one example. We had frequently
read of the so-called "emotional memory." According to this
hypothesis, an emotionally colored event not only leaves an
ineradicable trace on the human memory, but having become a
memory, invariably evokes a strong emotional reaction every
time any kind of association recalls the shock that was ex-
1
2 INTRODUCTION
perienced earlier. Pursuing this axiom confidently, we asked
our subjects to recall the events in their lives that were
connected with the strongest emotional experiences. How
surprised we were when these kinds of deliberate recollections
were accompanied in only a very limited percentage of cases
by clear shifts in skin potentials, heart rate, respiration,
and frequency-amplitude of the electroencephalogram charac
teristics. At the same time, recollections of persons, en
counters, or life episodes by no means connected in anamne
sis with any kind of feelings resulting from them evoked
exceptionally strong, stable, objectively recorded shifts
that were not extinguished with repetition. A more careful
analysis of the cases in the second category showed that
emotional coloring of recollections does not depend on the
strength of the emotions experienced at the moment of the
event itself, but on the actuaZity of these recollections
for the subject at a given moment. We could not help but
remember Chekov's Ionich who smiles ironically as he rides
past the home of a girl he once loved, past the balcony where
he spent a night in a state of shock and rapture. It becomes
clear that what we are concerned with is not the "emotional
memory" nor the emotions in themselves, but something else
hidden behind the facade of emotional feelings. It becomes
all the more clear that the simple accumulation of facts of
relatively objective "correlates" of human emotional reac
tions will add little to the physiology of emotions without
a proper attempt to answer the question that has arisen many
times in the history of science, the sacramental question:
"What is emotion?"
We looked for an answer to this question in experiments,
in literature, and in seminars of young colleagues at the
institute for the study of the methodological principles of
the science of brain activity. Very important for us was a
conference with the physicist, Anatolii Nikitich Malyshko, .
who invariably required the most precise (either profession
al, or "personal!") determination of concepts used in argu
ment. The "formula of the emotions" appeared in February,
1964, and we devoted all the subsequent years to a theoreti
cal and experimental working out of this formula from all
its aspects.
Our approach to the problem of emotions tends entirely
toward the Pavlovian in the study of higher nervous (psychic)
activity of the brain. And here we are not concerned only
with the fact that Pavlov's idea that the formation and dis-
INTRODUCTION 3
ruption of the dynamic stereotype as a critical link involv
ing the brain apparatus of emotions was the beginning point
of the "information theory of emotions." Perhaps even more
important was the general methodological approach of Pavlov
to the problem of the physiological and the psychological in
the study of higher forms of brain activity.
Pavlov wrote: "Whatever the basis, how could we dif
ferentiate, separate one from the other, what the physiolo
gist calls the temporal connection and the psychologist, as
sociation? In this case, the one is completely merged, com
pletely absorbed by and identified with the other" (Pavlov,
1973a, p. 489). This consequent monism of the great physi
ologist gave rise to myths that persist even now about Pav
lov's rejection of the psychological aspect of the study of
brain activity. I have come across one of the later papers
of Luria which criticizes the "many investigators of higher
nervous activity, taking the position of reductionism and
considering it possible to understand psychological processes
in man as physiological processes constructed on the prin
ciple of conditioned reflexes" (Luria, 1977, pp. 68 and 72).
Shvyrkov believes that "the physiological reflex theory gave
a 'purely physiological' explanation of the causes and mech
anisms of behavior in which the reflection by the brain of
objective reality is limited by the physiological processes
and the psyche is simply not necessary" (Shvyrkov, 1978, p.
14). However, Pavlov himself, formulating his investigative
strategy, maintained that "first of all, it is important to
understand psychologically, and then to translate to physi
ological language" (Pavlov, 1954, p. 275). If the psycho
logical and the physiological are one and the same thing, if
"the psyche is not necessary," then where did Pavlov get this
"first of all" and "then"? How is it possible to "translate
to the physiological language" what simply does not exist?
In a speech at a general meeting of the XII Congress of
Naturalists and Doctors on December 28, 1909, Pavlov said:
"I do not reject psychology as knowledge of the internal
world of man. Even less am I inclined to reject anything
from the deeper tendencies of the human spirit. Here and
now I only assert and confirm the absolute, indisputable
rights of scientific thought wherever and whenever it may
show its power. And who knows where this possibility will
end?" (Pavlov, 1973, p. 88). It is not difficult to see
that Pavlov's real views differ greatly from the treatment
accorded these views by his commentators.