In response to the Reith Lectures 2003, Dr Bundy Mackintosh considered the importance of emotion in the proper functioning of the brain
An enduring theme of this series of lectures is the challenge of consciousness in the brain. The evolutionarily ancient brain structures that serve many emotional responses operate outside conscious awareness, as we saw with the ‘quick and dirty’ route of Le Doux. Why then do we need to feel emotions at all? Let’s consider how other animals manage. A fish can successfully flee from noxious stimulation, and is attracted towards something that is food. It shows behaviour sequences that could be called emotional but most would assume that conscious awareness or feelings of emotion are absent.
If complex sequences of emotional behaviour are possible without emotional feeling then what is the function of feelings for humans? The answer to the question ‘Why feel emotions?’ may be partly answered by understanding ‘What is the function of conscious awareness? Peter Naish, in Consciousness and Hypnosis speculates about how consciousness allows us to imagine and pose ‘What if?’ questions, reliving past experiences, considering alternative actions and outcomes and generating options for the future.
There is little purpose to imagination without the ability to make choices. Feeling emotion and imagining feeling emotion sharpen up the decision making. Once emotional feeling is experienced in oneself, of course, the imagination can attribute it to other possible players in our life. Reflecting on possible ‘What if’ courses of action so often includes speculating on others’ possible reactions. ‘If I do this, will he like it and do that ... or if I threaten with a knife will she be frightened and run away?’ Complex social interactions and diplomacy surely depends on second guessing the emotional consequences of our actions on others. Feeling emotion may both help us to imagine, plan and remember our own actions and to include feelings of others as we plan interactions with them.
Imagine an imagination without emotional feeling. You read a book, watch a film, or listen to music. It is hard, perhaps even impossible, not to feel emotions along with players in the plot or feel moved by good music. In his fourth lecture, Ramachandran explores how the brain responds in particular ways to art and that the artist needs to tap into this style of responding to optimise effects. Understanding how the brain responds to art exploits circuitry used in the brain to perceive the world or understand language, but the essence of the artistic response must include emotion to carry its effect.
In this Reith Lecture series, Prof Ramachandran conveys the interest and excitement that rapid strides in psychology and neuroscience are bringing. It is intriguing to find how, as in the Capgras delusion, emotion may be fundamental to brain processes where it was previously thought to be irrelevant. In addition, the importance of emotion in considering the big question of consciousness shows just how far we have come since our capacity for emotion was thought to be a sign of weakness and an immature, irrelevant impediment to rational and logical thinking.
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Content last updated: 01/04/2003
About our expert
Dr Bundy Mackintosh is a Lecturer in Psychology at the Open University. Bundy moved to the OU in 2001, having worked for the previous 5 years in Cambridge at the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit.
Bundy's research areas include Cognition and Emotion, especially the cognitive process involved in anxiety.
