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The cognitive framework seems to comply with the need of interdisciplinary outlook on the issue of emotions, as it itself draws upon findings of psychological, anthropological and philosophical research. Along with undertaking further studies on the conceptualization of emotions in different languages, from the detailed analysis of the repertoire of linguistic means used for talking about emotions to investigation into tendencies to use metaphors or metonymies to talk about emotions, some broader conclusions could be drawn. The greatest challenge seems to be establishing whether there are any cultural (social, economical, conventional, political, religious) conditions that may influence the relevant changes in conceptualizing emotions in different languages and whether it is possible to point to any laws or regularities that would govern these changes.
Sprechen über Emotionen und Gefühle: neurobiologisch und alltagssprachlich - Das Beispiel "Angst"
(2012)
Metaphorical awareness of the native speakers of English in the conceptualisation of happiness
(2000)
Emotional instability, difficulties in social adjustment, and disinhibited behavior are the most common symptoms of the psychiatric comorbidities in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME). This psychopathology has been associated with dysfunctions of mesial-frontal brain circuits. The present work is a first direct test of this link and adapted a paradigm for probing frontal circuits during empathy for pain. Neural and psychophysiological parameters of pain empathy were assessed by combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with simultaneous pupillometry in 15 JME patients and 15 matched healthy controls. In JME patients, we observed reduced neural activation of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the anterior insula (AI), and the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC). This modulation was paralleled by reduced pupil dilation during empathy for pain in patients. At the same time, pupil dilation was positively related to neural activity of the ACC, AI, and VLPFC. In JME patients, the ACC additionally showed reduced functional connectivity with the primary and secondary somatosensory cortex, areas fundamentally implicated in processing the somatic cause of another's pain. Our results provide first evidence that alterations of mesial-frontal circuits directly affect psychosocial functioning in JME patients and draw a link of pupil dynamics with brain activity during emotional processing. The findings of reduced pain empathy related activation of the ACC and AI and aberrant functional integration of the ACC with somatosensory cortex areas provide further evidence for this network's role in social behavior and helps explaining the JME psychopathology and patients' difficulties in social adjustment.
Pathophysiological models are urgently needed for personalized treatments of mental disorders. However, most potential neural markers for psychopathology are limited by low interpretability, prohibiting reverse inference from brain measures to clinical symptoms and traits. Neural signatures—i.e. multivariate brain-patterns trained to be both sensitive and specific to a construct of interest—might alleviate this problem, but are rarely applied to mental disorders. We tested whether previously developed neural signatures for negative affect and discrete emotions distinguish between healthy individuals and those with mental disorders characterized by emotion dysregulation, i.e. Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and complex Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (cPTSD). In three different fMRI studies, a total sample of 192 women (49 BPD, 62 cPTSD, 81 healthy controls) were shown pictures of scenes with negative or neutral content. Based on pathophysiological models, we hypothesized higher negative and lower positive reactivity of neural emotion signatures in participants with emotion dysregulation. The expression of neural signatures differed strongly between neutral and negative pictures (average Cohen's d = 1.17). Nevertheless, a mega-analysis on individual participant data showed no differences in the reactivity of neural signatures between participants with and without emotion dysregulation. Confidence intervals ruled out even small effect sizes in the hypothesized direction and were further supported by Bayes factors. Overall, these results support the validity of neural signatures for emotional states during fMRI tasks, but raise important questions concerning their link to individual differences in emotion dysregulation.
Drawing on insights found in both philosophy and psychology, this paper offers an analysis of hate and distinguishes between its main types. I argue that hate is a sentiment, i.e., a form to regard the other as evil which on certain occasions can be acutely felt. On the basis of this definition, I develop a typology which, unlike the main typologies in philosophy and psychology, does not explain hate in terms of patterns of other affective states. By examining the developmental history and intentional structure of hate, I obtain two variables: the replaceability/irreplaceability of the target and the determinacy/indeterminacy of the focus of concern. The combination of these variables generates the four-types model of hate, according to which hate comes in the following kinds: normative, ideological, retributive, and malicious.
Drawing on insights found in both philosophy and psychology, this paper offers an analysis of hate and distinguishes between its main types. I argue that hate is a sentiment, i.e., a form to regard the other as evil which on certain occasions can be acutely felt. On the basis of this definition, I develop a typology which, unlike the main typologies in philosophy and psychology, does not explain hate in terms of patterns of other affective states. By examining the developmental history and intentional structure of hate, I obtain two variables: the replaceability/irreplaceability of the target and the determinacy/indeterminacy of the focus of concern. The combination of these variables generates the four-types model of hate, according to which hate comes in the following kinds: normative, ideological, retributive, and malicious.
A vast range of our everyday experiences seem to involve an immediate consciousness of value. We hear the rudeness of someone making offensive comments. In seeing someone risking her life to save another, we recognize her bravery. When we witness a person shouting at an innocent child, we feel the unfairness of this action. If, in learning of a close friend’s success, envy arises in us, we experience our own emotional response as wrong. How are these values apprehended? The three most common answers provided by contemporary philosophy explain the consciousness of value in terms of judgment, emotion, or perception. An alternative view endorsed mainly by authors inspired by the phenomenological tradition argues that values are apprehended by an intentional feeling. In this model, it is by virtue of a feeling that objects are presented as being in different degrees and nuances fair or unfair, boring or funny, good or bad. This paper offers an account of this model of feeling and its basic features, and defends it over alternative models. To this end, the paper discusses different versions of the model circulating in current research which until now have developed in parallel rather than in mutual exchange. The paper also applies the proposed account to the moral domain and examines how a feeling of values is presupposed by several moral experiences.