Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage : an account of recent researches into the function of emotional excitement / by Walter B. Cannon.

  • Cannon, Walter B. (Walter Bradford), 1871-1945.
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage : an account of recent researches into the function of emotional excitement / by Walter B. Cannon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    And in another similar instance the patient “retained her good humor and sometimes laughed heartily . . . as if behind a mask, her face being quite immovable and grave whilst the emotion and sound of laughter prevailed.” 14 The quality of emotions is to be found, therefore, neither in returns from the viscera nor in returns from the innervated muscles. POSSIBLE FUNCTION OF THE OPTIC THALAMUS The foregoing discussion has disclosed the fact that the neural arrangements for emotional expression re¬ side in subcortical centers, and that these centers are ready for instant and vigorous discharge when they are released from cortical restraint and are properly stimulated. Furthermore, the evidence is clear that when these centers are released the processes aroused in them become a source of vivid affective experience. That this experience is felt on only one side in hemi¬ plegic cases is a peculiarly happy circumstance, for in the same individual the influence of the same af¬ fective stimulus can be observed under normal condi¬ tions and compared with its influence when given free rein. The neural organization for an emotion which is suggested by the foregoing observations is as follows: An external situation stimulates receptors and the con¬ sequent excitation starts impulses towards the cor¬ tex. Arrival of the impulses in the cortex is associ¬ ated with conditioned processes which determine the