You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This is an excellent source book which provides a comprehensive survey of the current understanding of brain mechanisms underlying emotional processing. Chapters span a broad spectrum of inter-related considerations, from discussions of philosophy to reviews of state-of-the-art clinical neuroscience. Contributors, including the editor (Borod), represent many of the major theoreticians and researchers in the neuropsychology of affect (e.g., A. R. Damasio; R. Davidson; R. E. Gur and R. C. Gur; K. M. Heilman; D. Schacter and H. A. Sackeim). The book is divided into five sections: an introductory chapter, background and techniques, theoretical perspectives, emotional disorders, and clinical implications.
The introductory chapter by Borod and Madigan provides a very helpful roadmap of the upcoming intellectual terrain. Terms are defined. For example:
By emotion, we refer to reactions to an appropriately evocative stimulus involving cognitive appraisal (or perception), expressive motoric behavior, subjective experience (or feelings), physiological arousal, and goal-directed behavior
Overarching organizing constructs (called critical factors) are highlighted. These “critical factors or parameters” include: (1) the interhemispheric or laterality factor (right vs. left cerebral hemisphere); (2) the intrahemispheric factor (caudality/anterior vs. posterior structures and verticality/neocortical vs. limbic/subcortical diencephalic); (3) modes of emotional processing parameter (perception, arousal, experience and goal-directed activity); (4) the communication channel parameter (e.g., facial, prosodie, lexical, gestural and