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Library Journal Review
What happens neurologically within the brain during an emotional experience is extremely complex and difficult to study. LeDoux, a researcher at New York University's Center for Neural Science who was profiled in Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence (LJ 9/1/95), belongs to a cadre of scientists attempting to understand how emotions occur by studying brain biology and mechanisms. In examining the linkages among external stimuli, cortical events, and conscious feelings, LeDoux argues that evolution has provided us with these capabilities to enhance our chances for survival. The primary research cited here is challenging, and in places the text bogs down. Other recent books (e.g., Antonio Damasio's Descartes' Error, LJ 8/94) give a better introduction to the subject, but LeDoux's is the most focused and comprehensive. Despite the author's often emotionless style, this book contains some fascinating information. For both public and academic libraries.Gregg Sapp, Univ. of Miami Lib., Coral Gables, Fla. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
Brain researcher LeDoux believes that emotions evolved from bodily and behavioral responses controlled by the brain as a means to help our remote ancestors survive a hostile environment. The emotional states we subjectively experience, in this theory, are the end result of information processing that occurs unconsciously as the brain decodes the significance of stimuli in order to shape appropriate behavior. In this intriguing report, LeDoux, a professor at New York University, draws heavily on his own research into the brain's "fear system," which suggests that unconscious fear-related memories imprinted on the brain can result in deep-rooted neurotic anxiety, phobias, panic attacks or obsessive-compulsive disorders. He also reviews studies indicating that multiple memory systems exist in the brain, including one for "emotional memories," which helps to explain the course of Alzheimer's disease as well as adults' inability to remember early childhood experiences. Research cited here suggests that behavior therapy may actually rewire the brain's pathways. LeDoux's lively, heavily annotated text is amplified by numerous photos and drawings. Newbridge Library of Science main selection. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
School Library Journal Review
YADrawing from the work of many past and current researchers, LeDoux offers students an opportunity to become acquainted with research on behavior as it has evolved. His book is a chronicle of thought on the nature of brain function and the most human of attributesemotion. It is grounded in excellent scholarship and analysis while affording readers freedom from overly technical jargon. For AP psychology and biology students, this book might be used to plan original research experiments and to give background for a more in-depth view of physiological and behavioral factors. A book that will give readers a better understanding of the basis and motivating quality of emotions.Nancy Craig, R. E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Researcher LeDoux offers this readable explanation of his work on the neurological aspect of human emotion. He places his specific work on the fear reflex within the history of emotion research, which began with psychologist William James in the late 1800s. Later, LeDoux explains, cognitive science took over as it searched the brain's anatomy for an emotion-producing region, which it claimed to find in the "limbic" system. "Unfortunately," LeDoux writes, "the idea that the limbic system constitutes the emotional brain is, for a variety of reasons, not acceptable." He then explains that, as regards fear at least, emotion is an automatic, evolutionarily shaped response to a stimulus. The awareness of feeling afraid, LeDoux argues, is really the culmination of a complex of chemical and hormonal feedback loops interacting with long-and short-term memory. Aided by numerous schematic diagrams, readers get plenty to ponder in LeDoux's report from the cerebral frontier; they might wonder if such emotions as love fit into the flood of neurotransmitters. For active science libraries. Gilbert Taylor
