Lewis/Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology: BBS Call for Commentators

[Behavioral & Brain Sciences]

Below please find the abstract, keywords, and a link to the full text
of the forthcoming BBS target article:

            Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology 
                 through dynamic system modeling
  
                        Marc D. Lewis

This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and
Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal
providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current
research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.

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Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic
system modeling
  
Marc D. Lewis, University of Toronto

Abstract: Emotion theorists and neurobiologists have much to share
but they lack a common language for doing so. Emotion theorists rely
on causal assumptions that are simple, linear, and cognitivist in
character, and they emphasize psychological wholes that cannot be
explained by the interaction of their constituents. Conversely,
neurobiologists focus on the interaction of multiple components,
invoking complex, bidirectional causal processes, but they rarely
extend their analysis to psychologically meaningful wholes. Dynamic
systems principles can provide a bridge between the psychology and
neurobiology of emotion: (1) by explaining psychological as well as
neural processes in terms of bidirectional causation and emergent
part-whole relations, and (2) by grounding a model of self-organizing
emotional states in explicit correspondences between psychological
and neural events.

I first argue that the application of dynamic systems ideas to
emotion theory permits a reconceptualization of emotion-appraisal
states as self-organizing wholes. These are proposed to emerge from
bidirectional causal interactions among perceptual, cognitive, and
emotional constituents, and to maintain those interactions through
vertical ("circular") causality. I then present a psychological model
based on this reconceptualization, identifying trigger,
self-amplification, and self-stabilization phases of
emotion-appraisal states, leading to consolidating traits. The
article goes on to describe neural structures and functions involved
in appraisal and emotion as well as mechanisms of integration by
which they interact. Based on dynamic systems concepts, these
mechanisms are identified as nested feedback interactions, global
effects of neuromodulation, vertical integration, action-monitoring,
and synaptic plasticity, and they are modeled in terms of both
functional integration and temporal synchronization. I end by
elaborating the psychological model of emotion-appraisal states with
reference to these neural mechanisms.

KEYWORDS: appraisal, bidirectional causality, cognition, dynamic
systems, emotion, neurobiology, part-whole relations,
self-organization

FULL TEXT: http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Lewis-01212003/Referees/


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                    SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT

(1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review

    In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able
    to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our
    limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make
    it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per
    year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and
    biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you
    would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review.

    (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the
    basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you
    indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you
    nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of
    potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential
    impact!).



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Jeffrey Gray - Editor

Behavioral and Brain Sciences
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http://www.bbsonline.org
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