Victor
Johnston; Why We Feel |
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Topic |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
vii |
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Human brain
is the most intricate
and complex object in the known universe. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
vii |
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Our brain
creates what is, in
effect, a virtual reality. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
6 |
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Sleep and dreaming -- nightly hallucinations fill our minds with vivid
conscious experiences, even under conditions of total sensory deprivation. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
6 |
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Conscious properties of our mind, like our sensations and feelings, are firmly tied to the physical structure and chemistry of
our brain, and they can arise without any input from the outside world. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
8 |
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Redness as
a qualia -- a property that arises from the arrangement and interactions among nerve cells -- an emergent property. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
8 |
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Emergent property is an attribute that arises as a consequence
of the arrangement and interaction between individual components. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
8 |
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Complex arrangements of complex components produce complex emergent
properties. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
8 |
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Properties of mind can be viewed as emergent
properties resulting from the arrangement and chemical communication among nerve cells. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
9 |
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Functional role of emergent properties -- hard problem of consciousness. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
11 |
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Not every emergent property is functional. In biological
organisms, only functional attributes that ensures survival and
reproduction will eventually be transmitted to future generations. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
11 |
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Attributes of mind are
not just any emergent properties of the neural organization; they are those functional emergent properties
that enhance biological survival. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
12 |
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Human brain
has evolved a neural organization that can generate pleasant or unpleasant sensations for those aspects of the world that are a benefit or detriment to gene
survival. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
13 |
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Sweetness
is not a property of the sugar molecule; it is an evolved emergent property of our brain. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
13 |
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Sensations
such as sweetness
provide us with an immediate evaluation of sensory events, even in the
absence of any understanding of their biological importance or their
evolutionary origins. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
13 |
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Our discomfort at high or low temperatures and the unpleasant smell of our waste products are both evolved emergent properties. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
13 |
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The illusion of the brain's reality emulator is so powerful and ubiquitous that we come to believe that
objects really are red, or hot, or bitter, or
sweet, or beautiful, and we usually do not ask how or why we impose this
structure on our physical world, or how the structure relates to our
biological survival. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
13 |
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Our conscious world is a grand
illusion! |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
16 |
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Evolved emergent properties of the nervous system -- over many generations, by favoring qualia emergent properties that enhance gene survival, natural
selection has forged the neural machinery capable of generating qualia experiences. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
16 |
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It is always function -- gene survival -- that dictates biological design. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
33 |
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Phylogenetic learning - achieved through natural selection over generations; Ontogenetic
learning - arising from an individual's unique experiences. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
33 |
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Nature and Nurture |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
40 |
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Humans have
very poor facial
recall ability. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
40 |
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Humans are experts at facial recognition. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
41 |
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Babies will
look at faces in
preference to any other visual image. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
41 |
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10% of the cells in the inferior
temporal cortex of the primate
brain respond to pictures of faces. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
41 |
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Bilateral lesions in the inferior temporal cortex can result in a clinical syndrome known as prosopagnosia, literally "not knowing people"; cannot recognize close family
members and may even fail to recognize their own
face in the mirror! |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
41 |
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Prosopagnosia patients can immediately recognize individuals as soon as they speak. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
41 |
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Prosopagnosia patients have lost the visual recognition
ability -- the ability to associate the face with
the identity of the individual. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
41 |
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When presented with the correct set of cues, we may experience instant
recognition. Some subset of our neural network can be synaptically reactivated as a memory. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
57 |
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Turing Test'
- supposition that mental
faculties are exclusively
algorithmic. |
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16 |
Johnston;
Why We Feel |
58 |
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Conscious experiences are evolved emergent properties of biological brains. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
59 |
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Human conscious
experiences are emergent
properties that arise from the complex arrangements and interconnections between nerve cells. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
61 |
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Two types of feelings; affects
and emotions. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
61 |
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Affects --
directly evoked by specific inputs from the internal or external environment
and include such experiences as (pain, hunger,
thirst), |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
61 |
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Emotions --
internally produced by a complex cognitive process
(anger, love). |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
61 |
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Feelings --
emotions as well as affects -- two different hedonic tones, positive and
negative, pleasantness or unpleasantness. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
62 |
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Hedonic tone
-- evaluative aspect of a feeling, it's pleasantness or unpleasantness. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
64 |
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Feelings --
emergent properties
of the nervous system. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
65 |
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Affects possess hedonic tone and
intensity. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
65 |
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Affects and emotions will prove to be integral to our survival, not the irrelevant epiphenomena that
many cognitive scientists believe them to be. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
67 |
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Sensory feelings evolved in response to those environmental events that have
consistently presented opportunities or threats to biological survival in
ancestral environments. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
67 |
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Behaviors
followed by positive feelings are facilitated, whereas behaviors followed by negative
feelings are inhibited. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
79 |
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Unexpectedness contributes to the intensity of
emotion. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
80 |
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Emotions
differ from affects in
that they possess distinct qualities that are not
a function of sensory inputs. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
80 |
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Emotions
are difficult to study since they cannot be
measured directly, and we are forced to rely on verbal reports. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
81 |
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Natural selection could evolve a
value system that individuals can use to learn from their experiences. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
81 |
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Advantage of learning
-- adapt to rapidly changing aspects of environment; could not be achieved by natural
selection alone. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
82 |
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Learning
could complement biological evolution by allowing individuals to discover how to survive and
reproduce within their own unique and changing
environment. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
82 |
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Importance of feelings - emotions as well as
affects - regulating how, what, and when we learn and in determining how we reason about the world around us. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
83 |
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Feelings
act as active filters
that define and exaggerate the reproductive consequences of
environmental or social events associated with relatively minor fluctuations in reproductive
potential. Each qualitatively different feeling appears to monitor a
different aspect of reproductive success. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
84 |
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Fitness - relative reproductive
success. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
85 |
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Natural selection always favors attributes that enhance the survival of our genes, not simply
our own personal survival. We die, but our genes may go on forever. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
85 |
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Genes have
a higher probability
of being present in close relatives than in distant relatives or strangers. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
86 |
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Like bodily affects, the positive or negative hedonic tone of an emotion provides the necessary value
system for learning to adapt to rapidly changing aspects of the environment. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
87 |
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Intensity
of affects and emotions
can be viewed as amplifications of the reproductive consequences of current physical or social circumstances. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
88 |
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Primary emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear,
disgust, surprise). |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
90 |
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Six primary
social emotions are all apparent during the first
two years of life. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
90 |
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Congenitally blind and deaf
children exhibit the same range of facial expressions as normal children.
These expressions and their associated feelings are part of our biological
nature. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
93 |
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Anxiety disorders that may have arisen from chance
associations that were formed
in early childhood and are now long forgotten. |
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3 |
Johnston;
Why We Feel |
96 |
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Hedonic dimensions of feelings can be envisaged as ranging from extremely pleasant
to extremely unpleasant. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
100 |
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Secondary
or self-conscious social feelings - guilt, pride, envy - develop somewhat later than the primary emotions. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
100 |
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Primary emotions may be common to many species; secondary feelings appear to be a consequence of the unique history of humans. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
100 |
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Reciprocal altruism requires the ability to recognize
each other as individuals and the capability of remembering and quantifying many
different kinds of goods and services. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
101 |
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Generalized reciprocity and the secondary social emotions that monitor such transactions appear to be unique characteristics of human beings. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
101 |
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Children's facial expressions are automatic and controlled by subcortical
centers within the extrapyramidal
motor system.
[Stereotyped motor programs]
[FAPs] |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
103 |
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Novelty and
unexpectedness merely
arouse the nervous system, but this arousal is necessary and sufficient for learning to occur. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
104 |
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Habituation
- loss of arousal as a
result of repeated
exposure. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
104 |
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Events that
elicit feeling
continue to generate arousal and support creative learning throughout a lifetime. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
104 |
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Feelings
are like perceptions;
they qualitatively distinguish between relevant and irrelevant. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
106 |
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Every feeling
has a specific subjective quality, a hedonic tone, and an intensity. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
106 |
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Specific subjective quality of a
feeling provides the internal context that is stored with all learned
behaviors, increases the probability that they will be recalled during
similar internal states. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
106 |
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Hedonic tone,
positive or negative, facilitates or inhibits the behavioral act it follows: a reward facilitates and a deterrent inhibits motor patterns. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
106 |
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Intensity of a feeling modulates the degree of arousal that is required for learning. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
106 |
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Evolution has provided humans
with a primary value system of pleasant and unpleasant feelings. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
106 |
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Learning is
a mechanism by which new events can evoke our inherent repertoire of positive or negative feelings, based on their association with the primary set. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
109 |
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Neurophysiology of feelings, major neural pathways, medial
forebrain bundle, underlie hedonic tone, the shared components
of all feelings. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
111 |
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Emotional brain, MacLean's "Limbic
System" -
medial forebrain bundle (MFB)
(illustration) |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
113 |
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Hippocampus
receives input from the thalamocortical pathways activated by our senses. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
114 |
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Visual thalamocortical pathway, interaction with emotional
pathways -
(illustration) |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
115 |
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Medial forebrain bundle (MFB) interconnects the emotional and motor brains with about one million fibers running in each direction. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
115 |
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Medial forebrain bundle (MFB) has become known as the "pleasure pathway" of
the brain. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
115 |
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Hedonic tone
(pleasantness or unpleasantness) |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
116 |
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All addictive
drugs -- like cocaine,
amphetamines, alcohol, and heroine -- either directly or
indirectly activate the pleasure
pathway and eventually release
dopamine onto the nucleus accumbens. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
116 |
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Release of dopamine onto the nucleus accumbens appears to
underlie all reward
feelings. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
116 |
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Cocaine
causes a massive release of dopamine onto the nucleus accumbens, and the user
experiences a sudden 'rush' of extreme pleasure. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
117 |
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Release of dopamine appears to be highly correlated with both positive and negative hedonic tone, although different neurons and
receptor sites may be involved in each case, and
the effects on the motor system may be either excitatory or
inhibitory. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
117 |
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Limbic system
may originally have
evolved to provide the mechanism whereby survival needs of an organism
could regulate and guide
the automatic behaviors
of the old reptilian brain. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
119 |
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Neural processing of emotions begins with the limbic system, a number of interconnected
subcortical regions around the hypothalamus. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
119 |
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One major pathway from the limbic system via the hypothalamus is responsible for physiological adjustments to the body,
such as changes in heart rate or blood pressure. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
119 |
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A second
output pathway, common to all feelings, is the pleasure pathway, which ultimately
releases dopamine onto the nucleus accumbens. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
119 |
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The dopamine
pathway to the nucleus
accumbens is closely associated with the control of motor behavior and is
correlated with hedonic tone that is a fundamental aspect of all feeling
states. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
119 |
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Limbic system outputs influence
two major arousal systems of the brain, and these pathways provide a
mechanism by which feelings can modulate cortical arousal. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
119 |
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Specific portions of the limbic system project to different areas of the cingulate gyrus, allowing different patterns of limbic activity
to generate qualitatively different emotional
feelings and bias
cognitive processes. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
119 |
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Conscious experiences are an emergent property of the nervous system. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
120 |
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Cingulate gyrus of the
limbic system. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
122 |
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Consciousness
is the result of a dynamic organization that can exist within many
different areas of the brain. [Edelman's dynamic core] |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
123 |
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Arousal
entails an increase in the sensitivity of a large number of widely
distributed nerve cells. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
123 |
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Brain architecture is characterized by abundant reciprocal connections between cortical regions, recurrent pathways that permit feedback and reactivation of active areas, and lateral inhibition that focuses neural activity within active centers by inhibiting less active adjacent regions. [recursion] [Fuster's
perception-action cycle] |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
123 |
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Neural interactions between active cortical regions to be sustained by reciprocal
pathways interconnecting the active regions. [recursion] [Fuster's
perception-action cycle] |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
123 |
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Study of complex
systems that involve nonlinear
interactions between simple
elements. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
124 |
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Consciousness
is an emergent property
arising from the self-organization of concurrently active but spatially distributed regions of the brain; there is no central
organizer and no
unique location where it comes into
existence. [Edelman's dynamic core] |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
124 |
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Gestalts form around epicenters arising from a sensory input, an unconscious process, or the output of an earlier
gestalt. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
125 |
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Output from the limbic system provides the major source of arousal responsible for the formation of large neural gestalts. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
125 |
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Each conscious
experience is the consequence of the widespread and almost instantly numerous potential residents circuits that can be generated by binding
together in many
spatially distributed otherwise isolated parallel processes of the
nervous system. [Edelman's dynamic
core] [Fuster's perception-action cycle] |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
126 |
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The number of conscious
experiences that can be derived from combinations of multimodal sensory elements is virtually infinite, and conscious organisms benefit from the ability to distinguish between these different states. The ability to make
this discrimination is the essential (functional)
role of consciousness. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
126 |
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Each momentary experience is merely a virtual
representation that amplifies and discriminates
between those aspects of the physical or social
world that are biologically
relevant.
[Llinás, Brain operates as a reality
emulator.] |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
127 |
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Conscious experiences, like sensations and feelings, evolved because they dictated
a dynamic organization of the nervous system that could prioritize experiences and distinguish between environmental events or circumstances that had a real influence on
biological survival. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
172 |
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Common currency that underlies all of our decisions is hedonic tone. |
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45 |
Johnston;
Why We Feel |
172 |
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Degree of positive
or negative hedonic tone associated with the various outcomes supplies the utility function that underlies
all human decisions. [Bayesian inference] [Fuster's
perception-action cycle] |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
179 |
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Human feelings appear to provide the important value
system that underlies all human decisions. [Bayesian
inference] [Fuster's perception-action cycle] |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
179 |
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The shared element of feelings -- hedonic tone -- allows many different feelings to be combined and hence supply an overall assessment of the value
associated with the various possible outcomes of a decision problem. |
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Johnston;
Why We Feel |
179 |
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People like to believe they are
logical human beings who can "weigh the facts". In fact it is very
difficult, if not impossible, to achieve this level of abstract logical reasoning. |
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