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Book Review |
Explaining emotion in the brain
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Emotion has become a well-represented, and well-respected, topic of neuroscientific inquiry, as borne out by its exponential increase in citation indices (e.g. increases in publications with the word in their title by 300 in the 1980s, by 900 in the 1990s and by >1600 in the past 6 years according to Science Citation Index). The reasons for this increase lie with advances both in our theoretical understanding of emotions and in the development of new tools for exploring their neural basis—notably functional neuroimaging. These efforts have resulted in important advances also in the diagnosis and treatment of neurological and psychiatric diseases, many of which feature dysfunctional emotions as one of the most disabling components. It is thus timely to take stock of what we have learned, and to publish books that summarize the state of the field.
Edmund Rolls' latest book, Emotion Explained, provides such a summary. The book
Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, HSS 228-77 California Institute of Technology Pasadena CA 91125, USA E-mail: radolphs@hss.caltech.edu