How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain―How We Create Emotions Through Brain, Body, and Culture

This book is about emotions, but, the setup work of describing how the brain works was more interesting to me. I love the idea that we Experience our Constructed Model of the World as Reality. The other big ideas are: Constructed Emotions, Body Budgeting, Affective Realism, Social Reality (as a Super Power), and the Interoceptive System. There is a lot to unpack here. And, there are a few nits, too. Some of this is my spin on what the book says. Since my lens is Consciousness, the idea of the Model as Reality is the key to the book FOR ME. This ia a fragment of text that needs a lot of set-up. And the set-up needs set-up, too. So, the set-up and this text are repeated near the end. Obviously, the book leads you into this gently. p287: "From these three inevitabilities of the mind, we see that construction teaches us to be skeptical. Your experiences are not a window into reality. Rather, your brain is wired to model your world, driven by what is relevant for your body budget, and then you experience that model as Reality..." Also, very current about unlearning implicit bias, aka, Training the Elephant: "It is your responsibility to learn concepts that, through prediction, steer you away from harmful actions." Barrett goes into a lot of detail on a set of concepts that all have to do with modelling Reality. They are: Concepts (the model), Simulation (running the model), Prediction (using the model), Error Correction (tweaking the current categorization and/or the Concept). [jch] Our mental model is a "deep learning" model and categorization similar is "inference" in deep learning lingo, except deep learning does not have the simultaneous predictions... Prediction: (See Also: Clark's Surfing Uncertaintity) p59: "Though prediction, your brain constructs the world you experience. It combines bits and pieces of your past and estimates how likely each bit applies in you current situation." p62 "Through prediction and correction, your brain continually creates and revises your mental model of the world. It's a huge ongoing simulation that constructs everything you perceive while determining how you act..." p64 "When prediction errors occur there are two general options:" 1) change prediction or 2) filter sensory input to match prediction (Affective Realism, aka, implicit bias) I'd add 3) Throw the prediction error to consciousness. Perhaps that would be considered "Experiential Blindness". Barrett's Concepts are VERY SIMILAR to Bor's. Chunking. The "bits and pieces" packaged up into easily retrievable bundles. p29: "Every moment that you are alive, your brain uses concepts to simulate the outside world. Without concepts, you are experientially blind, as you were with the [ visual anomaly ] . With concepts, your brain simulates so invisibly and automatically that vision, hearing, and your other senses seem like reflexes rather than constructions." Constructed Emotions: emotions are concepts and the finer the granularity of your concepts, the easier it is to feel what you're feeling. It is more efficient. p67: "Usually, you experience interception only in general terms: those simple feelings of pleasure, displeasure, arousal, or calmness [mentioned earlier] Sometimes, however, you experience moments of intense interoceptive sensations as emotions. That is a key element of the theory of constructed emotion.In every waking moment, your brain gives your sensations meaning. Some of those sensations are interoceptive sensations, and the resulting meaning can be an instance of an emotion." p35: "The theory of constructed emotion incorporates elements of all three flavors of construction. From social construction, it acknowledges the importance of culture and concepts. From psychological construction, it considers emotions to be constructed by core systems in the brain and body. And from neuroconstuction, it adopts the idea that experience wires the brain." Barrett spent the early part of her PhD work trying to detect the "signatures of emotions" for the universal emotions, which was and still is the commonly accepted view. She could not find them. Instead, she started thinking in terms of population thinking. Each instance of anger is unique, based on habit and circumstance. On p 138, Emotions are 1) to make meaning - to understand one's state is more efficient, 2) prescribe action, 3) regulate your body budget to prepare for said action. These 3 are about you. Two other functions: emotional communication and social influence. Social Reality p134. "Emotions become real to us through two human capabilities that are prerequisites for Social Reality. First, you need a group a people to agree that a concept exists, such as "Flower" or "Cash" or "Happiness". This shared knowledge is called collective intentionality. Most people barely think about collective intentionality, but it nevertheless is a foundation of every society. Even your own name is made real through collective intentionality." p135. "Collective intentionality is necessary for social reality but not sufficient. Certain non-human animals are capable of a rudimentary form of collective intentionality without social reality. Ants work together toward a common activity, as do bees. ... Humans are unique, however, because our collective intentionality involves mental concepts. We can look at a hammer, a chainsaw, and an ice pick and categorize them all as "Tools," then change our minds and categorize them all as "Murder Weapons" We can impose functions that would not otherwise exist, thereby inventing reality. We can work this magic because we have the second prerequisite for social reality: language. No other animals have collective intentionality combined with words." Body Budget Body Budget is a term that is purposefully vague, but it works. Your brain minimizes the amount of energy it expends. It can refer to body budgeting regions, metabolism, psychological well being. The lab just published: Evidence for a large-scale brain system supporting allostasis and interoception in humans_ in Nature, Human Behavior. Ian R. Kleckner. p200: Your body budget fluctuates normally throughout the day, as your brain anticipates your body's needs and shifts around your budgetary resources like oxygen, glucose, salt, and water. When you digest food, your stomach and intestines "borrow" resources from your muscles. When you run, your muscles borrow from your liver and kidneys. During these transfers, your budget remains solvent. Affective Realism Affective Realism is a step past implicit bias. The Reality we see/hear is shaped by our affect. p79: "You might believe that you are a rational creature, weighing the pros and cons before deciding how to act, but the structure of your cortex makes this an implausible fiction. Your brain is wired to listen to your body budget. Affect is in the driver's seat and rationality is a passenger. It doesn't matter whether you're choosing between two snacks, two job offers, two investments, or two heart surgeons your everyday decisions are driven by a loudmouthed, mostly deaf scientist who views the world through affect-colored glasses." Interoception Exteroception are the senses vision, hearing, etc. Interoception senses our internal state. p73: "Interoception is a fundamental feature of the human nervous system, and why you experience these sensations as affect is one of the great mysteries of science. Interoception did not evolve for you to have feelings but to regulate your body budget. It helps your brain track your temperature, how much glucose you are using, whether you have any tissue damage, whether your heart is pounding, whether your muscles are stretching, and other bodily conditions, all at the same time. Your affective feelings of pleasure and displeasure, and calmness and agitation, are simple summaries of your budgetary state. Are you flush?Are you overdrawn?Do you need a deposit, and if so, how desperately? Experiencing our Constructed Model of the World as Reality Now, hopefully this makes sense. Perhaps, as my wife says, this is obvious to everyone, but, to me, it's a great model for consciousness. p283: "Affective Realism, the phenomenon that you experience what you believe, is inevitable because of your wiring. The body budgeting regions ... are the most powerful predictors in your brain, and your primary sensory regions are eager listeners. Body budget predictions are laden with affect, not logic and reason, are the main drivers of your experience and behavior." p284: "Affective Realism is an inevitability, yet you are not helpless against it. The best defense against it is curiosity..." "The second inevitability of the mind is that you have concepts, because the human brain is wired to construct a conceptual system." "The third inevitability of the mind is social reality." ... The social world becomes real. p287: "From these three inevitabilities of the mind, we see that construction teaches us to be skeptical. Your experiences are not a window into reality. Rather, your brain is wired to model your world, driven by what is relevant for your body budget, and then you experience that model as Reality..." We are responsible for our actions. Sure, your brain made you do it, but, "It is your responsibility to learn concepts that, through prediction, steer you away from harmful actions." We all need to "Train the Elephant" in Haidt's rider and the elephant metaphor. p155 "If you grow up in a society full of anger or hate, you can't be blamed for having the associated concepts, but as an adult, you can choose to educate yourself and learn additional concepts. It's certainly not an easy task, but it is doable. This is another basis for my frequent claim, "You are an architect of your experience?" You are indeed partly responsible for your actions, even so-called emotional reactions that you experience as out of your control. It is your responsibility to learn concepts that, through prediction, steer you away from harmful actions. You also bear some responsibility for others, because your actions shape other people's concepts and behaviors, creating the environment that turns genes on and off to wire their brains, including the brains of the next generation. Social reality implies that we are all partly responsible for one another's behavior, not in a fluffy, let's-all-blame-society sort of way, but a very real brain-wiring way." Nits. Granted, I am not the target for this book. I have read a lot of books and papers on Consciousness. This book is aimed at a much wider audience and I hope it does really well. For the most part, Barrett does a good job balancing between abstraction and complexity and dumbing the subject down. One example of dumbing it down too much is when she discusses to Damasio and the loss of a specific brain region at that point, just name the orbitofrontal context. 1) Terminology - intrinsic networks (p58), which is way too vague. The term Intrinsic Brain Network get 1.5M gaggle hits, while Large Scale Brain Networks (LSBN) gets 9.7M hits. Why not use the more decriptive and more widely used term? Another example, Theory of Mind is the widely used term for figuring out intentions, beliefs, etc of other people. She uses mental inference. If you are going to use a different term, use a more explicit term. Interception system would be better than interoception network. If the default mode Network is a part of it and the brain network concept is well established, don't add another layer of networks. No mention of Vagus Nerve.. Barrett refers to brain regions as if they were homogeneous "brain blobs". If all nodes in a network are homogeneous, then the intelligence would live in the routing tables, and downplaining the regions would be fine. HOWEVER, cytoarchitecture makes it clear that the different nodes have different processing capabilites. So the brain regions are as important as the network topology and they should be identified if it is relevant. Universal Emotions p173: So when the classical view [ of emotions ] reasserted itself in the 1960s, half a century of anti-essentialist research was swept into history's dustbin. And we are all the poorer for it, considering how much time and money are being wasted today in pursuit of illusory emotion essences. At press time, Microsoft is analyzing facial photographs in an attempt to recognize emotion. Apple has recently purchased Emollient. . . Google . . ." What? If emotions are not essences, not purely physiological, then it is a waste of time to detect them? Since language is learned, is it a waste of time to do speech recognition? What if the core emotions are not inherent physiologically, but, they are nearly universal because part of the Social Reality so early that they are nearly universal. They are like Proto-Indo-European roots. Another nit, she uses "scientists say" too much, as if everyone agrees with her. Nerdly nit: p129 "We only experience red when light of 600 nanometers reflects off of an object". If you are reading a screen and there is red on it, that is being emitted, not reflected. So, if you are well read in neuroscience, it may be a little distracting in some places, but, it was a lot of new material for me and SO worthwhile!!!

This book is certainly complicated and deals with a lot of excellent, modern concepts in neuroscience. As a professional in the field, I find Barrett's theory to be very intriguing and incredibly compelling. The ideas contained in this book have the potential to create a major paradigm shift the field. From an academic's perspective, I will examine a few of the major premises of the book. The biggest and most important thesis of this book is that the human mind constructs emotions via what she terms "predictions" and "affect." Barrett defines predictions (or concepts) in a similar way to previous theorists who call these ideas "schema or schemata." Her definition includes a very simple use that is similar to the colloquial term, or basically a concept or an idea of what we think will happen informed on what has happened to us in the past. Simple enough and very easy to understand. Affect, by her account, is the brain's ability to interpret signals coming in from the various parts of the body and t turn it into something meaningful for us. According to her, the brain is not very good at interpreting these signals at times, and our methods of interpretation come by way of external teaching rather than internal methods of defining them. She says that this is what separates the average person from those with Autism Spectrum Disorder; that they have not successfully incorporated these emotional keywords into their lives. All of these assertions are backed up by strong evidence, and by all accounts are consistent with most previous research in the field of cognition. Emotions and predictions or concepts all function in a similar fashion to heuristics, which are shortcuts and best guesses about what the brain things will happen. This is indeed how most people use emotions to function, as a methodology for interpreting how they feel and how others feel. I have noticed in other reviews some have questioned her evidence of questioning the objectivity of emotional perception, and I think these readers are missing the point. If something is completely arbitrary, as is the case with the social determination of emotions, then there can be no objective method for determining what someone is feeling. Objective, in this sense, is used in a scientific term to mean "Constant regardless of the observer." Typically this definition is applied to mathematical constants of the universe, such as the law of gravity which affects all things at the same rate proportional to mass and acceleration. Emotions do not function in the same way as the laws of physics do objectively, and therefore cannot be considered anything more than subjective; that is reliant on interpretation or our own experiences. With this in mind, her theory is far more comprehensive than any other that I have seen in my career, and is far more down to earth than other decisionmaking theories that tend towards a neat equation-style method of explaining how people work. People work based upon their "emotions" and the majority of people make decisions based on what "feels the best." In this case since Barrett has discovered the methodology by which these people govern their daily lives, there are huge implications for further studies down the road. On to the part about the applications of this resarch, which I find to be less infromative than the theory part, but that is likely because I'm an academic. In the second half of her book, Barrett uses the information she's discovered to apply it to how you, the reader, can use it to change your behavior and thoughts. You are in control of your emotions, and with some training, you can de-condition yourself from using them as a crutch for everything. Her advice is rather easily summarized as "be more self aware" and "Meditate to relax." To briefly editorialize, it seems unlikely to me that the average person would be able to complete changes like these on their own without the help of a therapist. That is, after all, (and this is something she admits in her book), why people seek the help of therapists in the first place---to reframe issues in a new light. Despite this, barrett does make an attempt to help the reader use this new information, despite how little it will likely mean.

Generally the book was interesting. There were times when points were repeated too many times, but one can skim those parts and get to the interesting material. The problem I had with the book is not really a problem with this particular book or this particular author (both of those are good). The problem is the assumption that seems to permeate a lot of books (including this one): until something is know by western science it is not really known. Concepts presented in this book are about constructed emotions and constructed views of the world and how our responses to the world are largely controlled by "background subroutines" that our brains develop through our lives as they try to figure out the best way to thrive. And, we are partially responsible for actions that seem automatic. These are all fascinating concepts. But, they are remarkably similar to the model of the mind that Yoga and Buddhism have had for 1000s of years. References can bear this out: "Light on Life" by Iyengar and "Beyond the Self: Conversations Between Buddhism and Neuroscience," by Matthieu and Wolf. And fundamentally, Buddha's 8-fold Path and when Buddha says that the world is our own creation, I think he is teaching about constructed world views and constructed emotional responses. Obviously, these early thinkers did not understand the physiology of the brain, but they lived and thought with the same brains we have. They developed good, practical user's guides to the mind. Don't get me wrong, I think it is great that western science is proving these things are reality. If everyone is genuinely seeking the truth, we ought to end up with a lot of similarities. But, it bothers me when they think the ideas are new. It is like when a European scientist goes to Southeast Asia and "discovers" a "new" species of frog and names it after himself. And, scientists credit him with discovering the frog, even though the people living in Asia have known about it longer than anyone could remember. Again, I don't think this author is uniquely guilty of this. In fact, she very often describes differences in emotional constructions in different places around the world. That is part of her evidence for the lack of emotional fingerprints in our brains. But, it still comes across like she has discovered a new thing, rather than scientifically proving a very old one. So, read the book. Be ready to skim some redundant sections. Think about why you respond the way you do. But realize, we are not the first people to struggle with these things, and there are already methods out there (yoga, etc.) to help us modify our world views, if we chose to pursue them.

There are a few pros and a few cons, but in a "is it worth the investment" of a lot of time frame of reference, the answer is mixed. It is well written, and is "pop" oriented in that, though thorough and deep, is a fun and relatively easy read. If you're an expert in the field, nothing new here. If you have even 1% interest in the human spirit as beyond the physical, not for you. If you don't have a lot of experience with the topic, it will be an eye opener, and well worth a careful read. Here's the balance. As an academic, Lisa can't really (even if she wanted to) go beyond the physicalist, "we are our brains" model of human beings. Which is a drag. Is the Love of God merely an on the spot stochastic prediction to avoid pain and balance the P and L of the brain's energy needs? Speaking of stochastics, Lisa describes the move from classical emotional theory (the one-two punch of sense and act) to stochastic, as revolutionary. Maybe in pop neuro, but certainly not in many other fields, including robotics. With a background in affective programming in robotics, it is axiomatic in our field that the old "just attach a video camera to a bot and the processor can use the video input to calculate the robot's steps" was eclipsed a decade ago by the need for stochastic, predictive, bayesian algorithms, a lot like Lisa's baseball analogies. On the topic of Bayesian, Barrett uses a feedback diagram (p. 63) to illustrate a prediction loop-- interesting and innovative in this field, but very common for decades in control theory and most recently in Bayesian feedback and feed-forward loops in learning and perception. One big personal disappointment, though I enjoyed the book immensely from many other perspectives, is the lack of mention of music. There is only a single page and a couple of notes on audio in general (the Zen tree in the forest analogy), yet the whole field of expectation and anticipation in music, story hooks and stakes, and many other real life, advanced analyses of emotion is strangely missing. Recent breakthroughs in the emotional science of voice leading, for example, by David Huron ( Voice Leading: The Science behind a Musical Art (MIT Press) ) goes into fascinating depth on the relation of prediction, expectation, anticipation and emotion. From a "know yourself" view, though well written, the book is dry. It doesn't cover truly breakthrough ideas helpful to relationships despite the social grounding of Lisa's model, such as Glasser's "four wheel drive" analogy of thought and perception being the drivers with the "rear wheel drives" being emotion and physiology, both driving yet not steering, as very helpful images of the answer to a question Barrett doesn't tackle: "Can we choose our emotions?" That question is the central topic of a book also not mentioned, Halstead's ( This is Your Brain on God: Algorithmic Psychology for Suffering Bio-Computers ) which both tackles the higher spiritual possibilities of emotion and also coined "Halstead's Rule" which is "You can't think your way to joy" -- an exploration of deep links, and failings, of cognitive approaches to emotion. Glasser would agree that you can't think your way to joy, but also, even in the four wheel drive analogy, stops short of Halstead's assertion that emotion IS a choice, directly, and not through a "way" or "series" of controlling thoughts. All the authors above do agree on one thing, though: the purpose of both emotion and spiritual systems, is behavior control. Well worth a read if you adjust your expectations and can set aside the "we are our brains" assumption in most of these academia-based pop neuro titles. Recommended for the right audience.

Having grown up thinking that emotions come in categories, getting through How Emotions are Made has been very eye opening. Science of the last 200 yrs has mainly focused on deconstructing the world into its essential parts in areas like physics, brain science as well has gone through much change with imaging technology that allows us to keep track of where neural activity is taking place during various experiences that we might have. In my educational system I am sure I was told that certain emotions create certain body responses and response to emotions like fear and anger and happiness could be usually seen through their impact on our physiology. How Emotions are Made brings new ideas to the table, that there is no such thing as essential emotions and that we merely have physiological responses to sensory inputs based on our historical pattern recognition of similar sensory inputs and how we then categorize them has to do with cultural knowledge. As a consequence emotions are not physical responses but rather cultural/subjective categorizations of our physical responses. This all sounds quite abstract I am sure. This is a deep book that weaves together a lot of ideas and presents a whole new way of thinking about emotions and our own humanity and consciousness. It starts out by showing some images or faces with expressions and asking the reader what they believe those people are experiencing as emotions. The reader as well as the groups surveyed with the results contained in the book all show very strongly that people see the same emotions in those faces. Interestingly as the surveyed group's culture becomes more removed the overlap does diminish. The author uses this as a starting point to frame the discussion and gives the background of the photos taken, which are from actors hyperbolizing some face. The author goes on to describe how a mind works and discusses it is a pattern recognition machine. The author discusses how the mind creates hierarchical knowledge and how we categorize objects very well. Our ability to distinguish objects into distinct categories has always been a challenging skill to program but this patter recognition is a strong attribute of how our minds work. The author goes on to discuss how emotions do not have a universal character and that a roller coaster and being in an out of control car might create similar physical conditions but totally different emotional characters. The idea that emotion has an independent character from the body the author believes is fundamentally flawed. The author then discusses how the body receives inputs from our environment and responds to best balance the "body budget" and then we frame our understanding of that process via the use of emotional characterizations. The author brings up ideas like emotions don't objectively exist as they represent our internal interpretations of our physiological responses rather than something objective and thus they are constructed from the way we live in a social world. There is much in common with some memetic ideas in this book. In particular that concepts are created and become reality by our use of language rather than have their independent existence. The author gives advice on how to better understand yourself and your emotions and frames the questions we should ask ourselves to improve the way we respond to stimuli. In particular expanding our emotional vocabulary and improving our categorization of emotions allows us to better understand our selves. The author also dedicates space to illness and the mind, examining things like depression and the overmedication in the US. As well the author discusses how diet, sleep, exercise help keep one's body balance in tune, which is the origin of where responses which are then interpreted as emotions come from. The author then tackles the law from a philosophical standpoint, ideas like intent are fundamentally questioned and the author argues that things like crimes of passion are misguided ideas. Finally the author reinforces how emotions are socially constructed ideas with the example of a barking dog. The interpretation of our favorite animals actions as manifestations of their emotional state just doesn't make sense as they don't have essential emotions. They do feel pain and pleasure but that is very different from happiness, sadness, fear, anger. We project how we interpret the physiological responses to certain stimuli as those emotions and it is fundamentally flawed to assume that we can project those on to other people. How emotions are made is a deep book with a lot of fascinating ideas. A review cannot do the book justice and I suspect it needs to be read multiple times, though I don't plan on re-reading it just yet! It has new ideas for an old field that needs to be rethought with modern imaging technologies. It is bold and illuminating and definitely food for much thought and will cause much introspection I suspect. Excellent book

Review of How Emotions are Made: the secret life of the brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett It is human nature to simplify and categorize and we think that our emotional feelings are the same as the emotional feelings of others. We are sure that we can read each other’s emotions by their facial expressions and body postures. And we usually conform our expressions to what is appropriate to social situations, sad at funerals, and happy at birthday parties. Anyone who smiles and laughs at funerals or scowls at parties is out of step or crazy. These assumptions are consistent with our thinking that we have evolved to share these essential instincts without variation. Your sad is my sad; your happy is my happy and so forth for anger, fear, love, and hate. A defendant’s possible remorse can be accurately read by a jury. A judge can be objective in sentencing. An eye witness’s honest account is what actually happened. The policeman may well have imagined a gun in the hand of the man he shot. We can tell what our dogs are feeling from the way they look and act. When a brain location is damaged, stimulated, or recorded, the corresponding behavioral effect is an indication of the function of that part of the brain. In other words, we act like reductionist scientists who isolate variables and interpret results by Occam’s Razor that the simplest explanation is the best fit to the data. In short, like our physicians using the medical model of disease, we treat observations as though they were causes. Of course, our ability to generalize is adaptive, protective, and predictive in most situations even though it is a shortcut that science must eschew unless and until the cause of things can be demonstrated. Description comes first but it is insufficient to causal understanding. As the ghost of his father tells Hamlet, “one may smile, and smile, and be a villain”. A dog may wag his tail and still bite you. A contorted face can be shown on a happy or sad individual whose heart rate may be unchanged, accelerated, or slowed, and who’s adrenaline and other hormones may present at variable extremes. Our expressions are not stereotyped like what ethologists use to call fixed action patterns. We are not automatons. We are each one of a kind. When we are mad, or glad, or fearful our expressions are not standardized. In fact, they are quite variable as a function of the culture bound concepts we learned as children and modified through experience as adults. Some cultures may have emotions not included in our repertory and others that we have they may lack. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it there is no sound because sound is a production of the sensory mechanisms of our auditory system. We see six bands of color in a rainbow including a blue one. Russians see seven including two “blue” ones. Wine tasters observe an amazing array of aromas and tastes that most of us do not discern. Damage to Broca’s Area in the left frontal lobe, was associated with jumbled speech, but now we know that it is not the speech center nor is it the only place where speech is effected in this way. Nor is the limbic system the emotional center of the brain or the amygdala the only place of anger and fear. The whole brain is involved in emotional expression. Our brains function to predict what is going to happen based on our history. Neuroplasticity is the rule. Neural circuits are changeable and they change as we learn and move. Neurons are constantly firing, changing rates, and reordering their connections. Functions are not precisely localized. The brain is far more complicated than our reductionist forebears imagined. And just as our finger prints are unique, so are our brains and our emotional expressions. It is our capacities that have been shaped by evolution not the variable phenotypes that they produce. We cannot bypass our emotions any more than we can bypass our thoughts. But that doesn’t mean we can’t change how we act or feel, it’s just harder because it involves re-learning. There is still a place for free will. In fact, it’s even more available to us than we thought when we believed that our emotions could preempt our rationality. What we now know is that when our brains tell us the truth with certainty, that this certainty is a function of our sensory experience. Moreover, others may be just as sure of the opposite truth on the basis of their experience. That does not mean that truth is relative, but it does mean that we have to be prepared to change our understanding based on the best evidence. We must be open to consider all sides of an argument. What a challenging world this has become. It’s a world where we ought to listen and learn through our entire lives. We need to be open to new ideas and concepts that we can hear and read and observe. Authoritarians are the bane of our existence and an insult to the infinite capacity of our brains. Read the book. It codifies the paradigm shift of the latest neuroscience.

I had trouble putting it down! It's an absolutely fascinating theory. It's also very well timed. We're learning so much about the unconscious bias that we All have, and how differently we can be affected depending on the context. Anyone interested in social science I think could gain a lot of insight, and practical ways forward, by reading this book. She not only explains a really interesting way of thinking about things she makes some practical suggestions for how we can strive toward self-improvement. She also explores what this theory may mean for people in authority, scientist, mental health, and just being a citizen of a diverse country. I would really love emotional granularity applied to social issues (like racism) and see how that affects​ the discourse and understanding. The writing is technical but not so much so that it's impossible for the layman to understand or enjoy, and the technical part is mostly in the first half. It is a long book, I didn't end up reading it all the way through in one sitting, but I was so excited by what I was reading that I gave it to a friend so she could read some and we could talk about it! I've also experienced severe depression, so I'm always looking for some more insight into my experience. More often than not I'm disappointed, Not with this book. She described my experience so closely it was eary. And so far it was the most satisfying explanation I've received, it's also encouraged me to address all health issues rather than only looking at one. Everything that's taxing to our bodies/minds adds up. So many people also seem to experience their Self as a solid unchanging thing, but we aren't at all. If you've ever looked at something from 10 years ago you were so proud of, but now is embarrassing, you know this is true.

My first amazon review - I'm compelled to write it because I've rarely been this annoyed by a book. This book has many problems but I'll stick to the most salient, which is that the supporting evidence provided and general attitude of the author do not inspire confidence in the story of emotions that she is telling. When a reader of pop science comes to a book like this, they are novices and must trust the author to guide them into new territory. For me, I expect to receive a fair summary of the state of the field, and for the bulk of the book to be about science which is largely accepted by other scientists. I doubt this is happening in this book for the following reasons: Citations - Some citations in the main text purport to confirm the authors claims. In particular her argument in the book rests heavily on the finding that there are no physiological fingerprints for emotion categories. She cites 4 meta-analyses in the main text which she says support her claim. When following these citations, I was redirected to a website made for the book. There I discovered that actually 3 of these meta-analyses DO find physiological fingerprints for emotion. The 4th was run by the authors lab and didn't find them. The author gives reasons why the other studies were wrong. I tracked down the original papers, and some comment papers by LFB, and saw these other authors replies to that etc etc. Basically I have no idea who is right, but that there is not a clear consensus at all about the authors claims. There is no way for a lay reader to understand or settle the dispute, so it is too early for a book like this to confidently pronounce to the public "scientists now agree x...". The book is overly confident about this and several other claims (e.g. how certain tribes/cultures percieve colour) - when you fact check the claims it is clear that the situation was less clear cut than you were led to believe. This leads me to a related problem of... Tone - the author has a terrible writing style. She is the exact inverse of how you'd hope a scientist to conduct themselves in this arena - overly belligerent towards other researchers and overly confident in her sweeping theories. This belligerence extends beyond her writing. For those willing for their patience to be tested, I recommended seeing her on Robert Wrights podcast (available on youtube) for a magnificently bizarre interview. I might want a lawyer who was this defensive or hostile, but not a scientist who was supposed to explain their work. There are plenty of other problems which I won't go into. Most of them have to do with the authors theory leaping ahead of the established facts, which led me to exasperation every few pages. The neuroscience which stands independent of her theory of emotion was interesting however, and I did like the model of a prediction-error correction loop as a general principle of perception. As for how emotions are made - I am not much the wiser until I find a book who's author I can trust....

Banbrytande forskning om känslor. Rekommenderas.

Excelente leitura.

Estoy en el inicio, me parece interesante…

J'adore l'information qui est partagé dans ce livre. Les concepts neuronaux et l'idée de prédiction constante dans le cerveau m'est très intéressante. J'ai appris beaucoup de chose sur la cognition humaine. C'est définitivement un bon livre pour enrichir sa base de connaissance en neuroscience. Il est accessible dans sa lecture, vous n'avez pas besoin de formation universitaire pour tout bien comprendre.

Reading this book shocked me for weeks because as a psychologist interested in neuroscience, I thought ‘what have I’ve been taught at the University? What have I been explaining to my clients? Not even Pavlov discoverings were correct!? ...” When you read this book is like learning a new language, difficult for me, Chinese. However, is fascinating because it will make sense and will be more reasonable explanations in her book about the human brain, the body, mind, emotions, and behavior. At the same time, this book will influence positively your relationships, with others and yourself ( what you think others feel is not always correct, worst, is usually wrong: trying to read face and corporal expressions?). It will mindfully connect you to the universe and you’ll value the power of concepts and words, I highly recommend this book and I wish one day soon she could rewrite all the psychology, psychiatry curriculum and books.