The Neuropsychology of Emotion: Joan Borod (Editor).  Oxford University Press

This is an interesting collection of pretty good to excellent essays, covering most of the territory of the neuropsychology of emotion. It does have some weaknesses and conceptual holes, and also some unevenness, in terms of the differential quality of various contributed chapters. But it is worth having as a compendium of much of the current state-of-the-art thinking on the subject. As such, it also mirrors some of the problems, controversies, and blind spots in even state-of-the-art mainstream thinking about emotion. These centrally include recurring issues around typology, difficult cortical vs. subcortical issues in the functional neuroanatomy of emotion, and the closely related problem of conceptualizing cognition-emotion interactions.

There is an introductory chapter that gives an overview and summary of the various contributions, and it gives the critical reader an inside view of the assumptions and organizing concepts informing the collection of essays. It provides a useful overview of the editor's views and helps orient the reader to particular chapters of potential interest. There are many chapters in the volume, covering a wide range of subjects related to the neurology, neuropsychology, and psychology of both normal and pathological affective states, the latter including the classical clinical disorders of depression and mania. There are chapters on the epistemology of “reason” and emotion; a review of neural systems involved in both the expression, experience, and recognition of emotion; a chapter on vertical integration across levels of the neuroaxis in emotion; one on the neuropsychological assessment of emotional processing in brain damaged patients; one on neuroimaging of emotion; on psychological and cognitive science approaches to emotion; on models of mania and depression derived from “secondary” affective disorders in neurological patients; one on regional brain activity in sadness and depression; on stress and cortical function; one on violence;