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On Antonio Damasio’s the hypothesis of feeling
jing fu
Thursday, 26 June 2008 09:47 UTC
In Antonio Damasio’s book The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness,he put forward the hypothesis: any feeling is consists of two psychological components,one is the first-order map,the other is an accompanying emotion.The two psychological components are from two different neural pathways, and then they are hang together in the second-order map, and the integrated feeling about one stimulation comes into existence(P:279 to 284). Which is based on a lot of neuroscientific discovery and he participated in such a experiment: central nervous system surgerying for a patient with trigeminal neuralgia,the surgical operation damaged some precentral gyrus which is related to the neurotransmission of emotional pathway, but it has no effect on the neural pathway which opens onto somatosensory area.The result is：this patient reported that although there is a similar pain from the same position,the intensity was markedly weakened[P:74 to 76].
His the hypothesis of feeling is consists of emotions and sensations,which is, so to speak, a new discovery on the real structure of feeling,
and revealed its deep essence. it also implies that the independence of the emotional feeling in the feeling.I believe this hypothesis has some important potential values, which has respect to several important problems of emotion research.
Updated 10 September 2008 12:01 UTC
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Replies
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I think, Firstly It suggests that we should rethink these traditional concept of the feeling and emotional feeling etc.
The category of feeling involves bodily feeling and feelings. In the aspect of feelings, for a long time people believe that the fear, anger, love and shyness etc of feelings them are all the feeling to kinds of holistic emotions ,or called emotional feeling. For example, the feelings of fear, it is generally agreed that fear is one of the basic emotions, Amd it is the feeling to emotion of fear，or it is an emotional feeling of fear, and it is a perception to the excited state of neural pathway of the fear emotion . However, on the Antonio Damasio’s understanding of the feeling is a holistic feeling which is composed of emotion and sensation, the feeling or emotional feeling will be no longer only the perception to emotion, and can only speak the perception of emotion it is only one of component in feeling or in emotional feeling. So.strictly speaking , such as fear, shyness and love etc of feelings, will should not pass for the feeling to emotion or emotional feeling, and It can only say that these contain the feeling to emotion. For example, feelings of fear, it should be the feelings which is composed of emotion from non-specific nerve tract, sensation of muscular tension from specialmodality and the sensations to the outside stimulus. well then ,can we to distinguish some concepts in this way?
1、Emotional feeling:it is the perception to the excited state of non-specific neural pathway, and it is only a component in all kinds of feeling.
2、Feeling: it include bodily feeling and feelings,and it is an integrated feeling which is composed of the emotional feeling and sensations of they were occur simultaneously in the cerebra.
3、When the neural pathway of emotion were excited by some Kind of excitation, and generate the emotional feeling, if it is the sensations of body that hang together with it in the second-order map area, it will form the bodily feeling such as Skin Pain, sensatory pleasure and hunger, thirstiness etc; if it is not only the sensations of body hang together with it in the second-order map area， but also contained some the perception to external objects and self-consciousness etc, it will form the feelings such as fear,love, sadness and shyness etc .In my opinion, If we to reconsider and differentiate the traditional concept of the feeling , emotional feeling and feelings by dint of Antonio Damasio’s the new interpretation of histological structure of the feeling, it would help to us to study and explain them more deeplya and detailedly.
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Dear Jing:
Many thanks for your Forum and discussion. At first sight I am in general agreement with you and Damasio, but I do not think that we need different concepts of feeling/emotional feeling etc.
My perspective on this subject is that – like in perceptual processes operating with several modalities and generating an unitary conscious percept – in the case of feeling/emotion several brain pathways and regions are co-activated, and the products of these distributed processes are bound together by means of oscillatory synchrony and related processes.
Therefore the non-specific pathways as well as somatosensory and other pathways activated by skin injury by X all converge to produce the same complex result, in this case a feeling/emotion of X’s skin pain.Best
Alfredo
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Dear Alfredo
Thank you very much for your exchange and instructions.
I’m so glad to we have some common
perspectives,and glad to you put forward different opinion. To tell the truth, my Englishlevel is very low. I call they the “feelings”that such as fear, anger, love and shy etc,and call others the “body feeling”that such as pain of Skin, bodily pleasure and
hunger,etc,and both they beneath the concept of “feeling”. Will that do? I want to hear your advice.In addition, on the simple property of emotional feeling, and whether there really exist the Phenomenon of differentiation of emotion.I think, Damasio’s the revelation of the independence of emotional feeling in concrete feeling, which can help to us to know more objectively the characteristic of emotion in subjective feeling based on the knowledge of basic characteristic of the emotional neural pathways.As the emotional neural pathway is non-specific and its projection is diffuse in cortex, Therefore, the emotional feeling they themselves probable are simpleness in awareness, and they have not other distinguishable characteristics except these characteristics of pleasure or displeasure and intensity which have exist in all the bodily feeling and feelings.As for the others various characteristics in all kinds of feeling， they may are only related to the component of sensations. From the perspective of they are tight hang together in feeling that emotion and sensations,as the component of sensations is from specific neural pathway,and they have manifold distinguishable characteristics in awareness. So, Whether just because of these sensations which nature is many dimensions combined with the emotional feeling which nature is monotonous，that is why we can also experienced various kinds of different characteristics and attribute in feelings and bodily feeling besides pleasure or displeasure, thus forming the various kinds of concrete feeling. Or we can say,it is because of those sensations which has different attribute appended on simple emotional feeling,this lead to the result it has seem diversity in awareness that pleasant or unpleasant emotional feeling which are produced by physiologicial stimulative or cognitive activity,thus forming all kinds of body feeling and feelings of these have same emotion but the attribute is different. That is, the psychological profiles of the emotional component in all the pleasant bodily feeling and feelings such as sensatory pleasure, interest, joy, happiness, aesthetic feeling and so on, and the psychological profiles of the emotional component in all the unpleasant bodily feeling and feelings such as skin pain, , hunger, fear, sadness, ugly feeling and so on，the former are merely simplex pleasant emotions of different intensity ， the latter are merely simplex unpleasant emotions of different intensity, the only difference is the various attributes of the sensations appendeding on them. take the example of feelings of fear again,its emotional component may be only simple and intense unpleasant emotion.It is the sensation of muscle tonus that has made the attribute of " tension " in feelings of fear.We have seen from the above，the so-called differentiation of emotion which had differentiation may just the component of sensations in feeling，and it is because the sensations of differentiation which are formed by evolution combined with the simple emotion of undiferentiated to generate the differentiation of concrete feeling.Namely,it is the feeling （include bodily feeling and feelings）that had differentiation,but not the emotional feeling. The emotional feeling is still invariable.
Best Regards
Jing Fu
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On the possible operation mode of the emotion evoked by cognitive activity
Tt has been known that cognitive activity is one reason to trigger emotions .beneath the know that feeling is composed of emotion and sensation, it seems more lucidity that operation mode of the emotion evoked by cognitive activity, and can help us to make such a hypothesis that as for Present individuals ,The emotional components in feelings produced by cognitive activity, which in the beginning are all the reactivation of the emotional components in their own bodily feeling.
Known the influence of bodily feeling on feelings, and the amygdala as emotion center in the process of body pain encoding, and the amygdala plays a role in the process of drug analgesia etc, these back to them have the common ground of the brain structure that two emotional component of in bodily feeling and in feelings.Looking at the emotional arousal is from the amygdala and other brain structure which be related to physiological change of body, The Production of unconditioned emotion cannot but is directly related to the physiological change of body. Moreover, the can been proved fairly at Present that can unconditionedly produce the physiological changes and emotinoal response of amygdala only the stimuluses which have direct influence on the biological organization of body. as for whether these vision and hearing etc of special perception can also unconditionedly produce the emotional response of amygdala, which still have not sufficient evidence so far, but classical conditioning experiment had proved the vision and hearing they can produce the conditional physiological change of body ,It also shows that optical and acoustical information can produce the conditioned emotional response which be related to physiological change of body. So, Because of the the body feeling is formed in emotion combine with sensation, this has shown that a temporary connection would be built up in the combination of these two different kinds of nerve action of emotion and sensation of a same bodily feeling, and accordingly have this possibility that they can trigger each other in the future. So, When a certain sensational component in quondam bodily feeling is alone reactivation by cognitive activity, although there have not generate the “physiological emotion” at the same time ( here, For consideration of clear expression ,I temporarily call it the “physiological emotion” that emotional components in bodily feeling which directly produced by bodily stimuli), under some conditions, it will could activate the quondam “physiological emotion” through the temporary neural connection between the sensation and quondam “physiological emotion”. Therefore，if takes into account the inner link between the nonce cognitive activity and the sensations in quondam bodily feeling, whether we can make such a supposition: As for present individuals ,all the " psychological emotion " generated by cognitive activity (In order to distinguish from “physiological emotion”,I temporarily call it the “psychological emotion” temporarily that emotional component in feelings produced by cognitive activity ) Which production are based on the “physiological emotion” of the individuals past had personally experienced. that is to say, the “physiological emotion” produced by bodily stimuli is the basis for produce all the"psychological emotion", namely ,The production of any “psychological emotion” is the indirect or more indirect reactivation of the quondam “physiological emotion”. But just because it generally is the cognitive sensations from vision or hearing that anew hang together with quondam emotions in feeling at this time，and there are without or lack the sensations from body, so put up the obviously difference between body feeling and feelings on attribute in subjective perception .this also explained only the emotional components in bodily feeling can be congenital, and all the emotional components in feelings should be acquired.
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