I don’t think these systems are in the brain to create emotions. These are survival functions, and as evolution went from single-cell to multicellular organisms, the fundamental life force of staying alive still required defense against danger, sufficient nutrients and energy, balancing of fluids, thermoregulation, and reproduction. In addition to responding to danger, they acquire nutrients, balance fluids between their inner and outer environment, and reproduce to keep their species going. Bacteria do all sorts of things that we do to stay alive. Obviously there are a lot of differences between bacteria, rats, and people, but what we’re looking at here is a survival function. If you put some acid on one side, they all move to the other side. They’re in their little petri dish in a lab. But if you follow the logical conclusion of all of this, you will see that even bacteria do these things. So it’s natural to assume that when a rat is doing those things, it’s probably feeling some sort of fear as well. When a person is in that state, they do the same sorts of things. If you think about what an animal does in a situation of danger, it does something to protect itself, either by remaining motionless or moving away from the harm. I’m studying the way the rat brain detects and responds to danger.” But I called the circuits “fear circuits.” Some people say, “How can you study emotions in rats, because you don’t know what rats feel.” I say, “I’m not studying feeling. This is an issue within the field - exactly what emotions are.

Joseph LeDoux: After 30 years, I’ve decided that I haven’t been studying fear or emotion at all. During a visit we paid the professor at this NYU office, the director of the Emotional Brain Institute and author of the bestselling books - “The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life” and “Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are” - shared his latest epiphanies.īrain World: You’ve been studying fear and emotion a good many years … These days, LeDoux is looking at things differently. The Amygdaloids (Daniela Schiller, Joseph LeDoux, Amanda Thorpe) at the Williamsburg Waterfront.Ī Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science and professor of neural science and psychology at New York University, his concentration on the amygdala, that almond-shaped structure in the brain’s temporal lobe having to do with emotional behavior, has also spawned a rock band called the Amygdaloids, with himself and three of his scientific colleagues. He has been doing research on animals, primarily rats, to understand pathological fear and anxiety in humans. Joseph LeDoux has spent 30 years studying the biological underpinnings of memory and emotion, especially the mechanisms of fear.

Pathological fear structure