Exploring Emotion

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Emotions have developed along with the sophistication of the brain as an organ throughout the process of evolution. Instinctive feelings necessary for survival, such as thirst, hunger, and sex drive, are the oldest and most primitive “emotions”, and they are present in many non-human creatures. The monitoring systems in an animal’s body send signals to the brain when the body is in need of food or water, and this triggers the firing of neurons that in turn advise the creature to search for these necessities. Because these instinctual feelings are reflex related, they originate in the brain stem of primitive creatures (do Amaral). As animals progressed and their brains advanced from just a brain stem into the cerebellum and eventually the cerebral hemispheres, they began to experience more complex, affective emotions including love, friendship, and maternal care (Bekoff 861). Humans possess the most complex brains, and therefore it is believed that humans experience the widest range of emotions. Experimental evidence has shown that human emotions result largely from interactions between several different parts of the brain, known collectively as the limbic system (Thompson 29). The more psychological view of emotions claims an emotion is expressed in reaction to one’s individual interpretation of the surrounding environment. This explanation provides a slightly higher-level view of the issue at hand. However, how and why humans feel something during an emotional experience is still unknown and heavily debated. I believe that these feelings arise as part of the epiphenomenon of consciousness that is unique to living beings, and therefore the complete human emotional experience cannot be mechanically replicated....

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...ius of human life.

Works Cited

Anatomy of the Brain. American Health Assistance Foundation. 5 Dec. 2002 .

Bekoff, Marc. “Animal Emotions: Exploring Passionate Natures.” Bioscience. Oct. 2000: 861-882.

Boeree, Dr. C. George. Emotion. 2002 .

do Amaral, Julio Rocha and Jorge Martins de Oliviera. Limbic System: The Center of Emotions. .

Picard, Rosalind W. “Does HAL Cry Digital Tears? Emotions and Computers.” HAL’s Legacy: 2001’s Computer as Dream and Reality. Ed. David G. Stork. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.

Rolls, Edmund T. The Brain and Emotion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Thompson, Jack George. The Psychobiology of Emotions. New York: Plenum Press, 1988.

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