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The emotional brain

Abstract

The discipline of affective neuroscience is concerned with the neural bases of emotion and mood. The past 30 years have witnessed an explosion of research in affective neuroscience that has addressed questions such as: which brain systems underlie emotions? How do differences in these systems relate to differences in the emotional experience of individuals? Do different regions underlie different emotions, or are all emotions a function of the same basic brain circuitry? How does emotion processing in the brain relate to bodily changes associated with emotion? And, how does emotion processing in the brain interact with cognition, motor behaviour, language and motivation?

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Figure 1: Darwin's drawings.
Figure 2: The Papez circuit theory of the functional neuroanatomy of emotion.
Figure 3: MacLean's limbic system theory of the functional neuroanatomy of emotion.
Figure 4: Key structures within a generalized emotional brain.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge A. Lawrence for advice and comments throughout the preparation of this manuscript. This work was funded by the UK Medical Research Council.

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Dalgleish, T. The emotional brain. Nat Rev Neurosci 5, 583–589 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1432

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