Joseph E Ledoux
Biographic Data
| ID | 1752762 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joseph E Ledoux |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joseph E |
| FAMILY NAME | Ledoux |
| SIGNATURE | LEDOUX J E |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8518-132X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Four Realms of Existence
Deep history and beyond
The commentaries by Ren, de Carvalho, Gabriel, Reber and Baluška raise interesting and timely questions about the views I expressed in The Deep History of Ourselves. I begin my response with an Overview of my perspective, and how it has changed in the three years since publication. This is important since some of the commentators’ concerns may be assuaged by some of these points. Other specific issues raised by each commentator are addressed sepa…
The Deep History of Ourselves
The essence of who we are depends on our brains. They enable us to think, to feel joy and sorrow, communicate through speech, reflect on the moments of our lives, and to anticipate, plan for, and worry about our imagined futures. Although some of our abilities are comparatively new, key features of our behavior have deep roots that can be traced to the beginning of life. By following the story of behavior, step-by-step, over its roughly four-bill…
The rise of affectivism
Understanding the Higher-Order Approach to Consciousness
The higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness has often been misunderstood by critics. Here, we clarify its position on several issues, and distinguish it from other views, such as the global workspace theory (GWT) and early sensory models (e.g., first-order local recurrency theories). For example, HOT has been criticized for overintellectualizing consciousness. We show that, while higher-order states are cognitively assembled, the requirements …
Opportunities and challenges for a maturing science of consciousness
A higher-order theory of emotional consciousness
Significance Although emotions, or feelings, are the most significant events in our lives, there has been relatively little contact between theories of emotion and emerging theories of consciousness in cognitive science. In this paper we challenge the conventional view, which argues that emotions are innately programmed in subcortical circuits, and propose instead that emotions are higher-order states instantiated in cortical circuits. What diffe…
Using Neuroscience to Help Understand Fear and Anxiety
Tremendous progress has been made in basic neuroscience in recent decades. One area that has been especially successful is research on how the brain detects and responds to threats. Such studies have demonstrated comparable patterns of brain-behavior relationships underlying threat processing across a range of mammalian species, including humans. This would seem to be an ideal body of information for advancing our understanding of disorders in wh…
Feelings
Traditionally, we define “emotions” as feelings and “feelings” as conscious experiences. Conscious experiences are not readily studied in animals. However, animal research is essential to understanding the brain mechanisms underlying psychological function. So how can we make study mechanisms related to emotion in animals? I argue that our approach to this topic has been flawed and propose a way out of the dilemma: to separate processes that cont…
Rethinking the Emotional Brain
Unconscious and conscious contributions to the emotional and cognitive aspects of emotions
Contributions of the Amygdala to Emotion Processing
Fear and the Brain
Jacek Debiec and Joseph LeDoux Fear and the Brain FEAR IS A NATURAL PART OF LIFE. IT OCCURS WHENEVER WE ARE THREATENED. Threats come in many forms. A snake on the ground in front of you is a biologically prepared threat, and so is being face-to-face with an angry human. Evolution has put this kind of information into our brains as a way of dealing with recurring and common themes. When we encoun ter them we have the familiar fight/flight respons…
The Emotional Brain, Fear, and the Amygdala
Emotion Circuits in the Brain
The field of neuroscience has, after a long period of looking the other way, again embraced emotion as an important research area. Much of the progress has come from studies of fear, and especially fear conditioning. This work has pinpointed the amygdala as an important component of the system involved in the acquisition, storage, and expression of fear memory and has elucidated in detail how stimuli enter, travel through, and exit the amygdala. …
Emotion
A revolution in the science of emotion has emerged in recent decades, with the potential to create a paradigm shift in decision theories. The research reveals that emotions constitute potent, pervasive, predictable, sometimes harmful and sometimes ...Read More
Cognitive-Emotional Interactions in the Brain
Emotion and cognition are mediated by separate but interacting systems of the brain. The core of the emotional system is a network that evaluates (computes) the biological significance of stimuli, including stimuli from the external or internal environment or from within the brain (thoughts, images, memories). The computation of stimulus significance takes place prior to and independent of conscious awareness, with only the computational products…
The rise of affectivism
Fear and the Brain
Jacek Debiec and Joseph LeDoux Fear and the Brain FEAR IS A NATURAL PART OF LIFE. IT OCCURS WHENEVER WE ARE THREATENED. Threats come in many forms. A snake on the ground in front of you is a biologically prepared threat, and so is being face-to-face with an angry human. Evolution has put this kind of information into our brains as a way of dealing with recurring and common themes. When we encoun ter them we have the familiar fight/flight respons…
Opportunities and challenges for a maturing science of consciousness
Feelings
Traditionally, we define “emotions” as feelings and “feelings” as conscious experiences. Conscious experiences are not readily studied in animals. However, animal research is essential to understanding the brain mechanisms underlying psychological function. So how can we make study mechanisms related to emotion in animals? I argue that our approach to this topic has been flawed and propose a way out of the dilemma: to separate processes that cont…
Cognitive-Emotional Interactions in the Brain
Emotion and cognition are mediated by separate but interacting systems of the brain. The core of the emotional system is a network that evaluates (computes) the biological significance of stimuli, including stimuli from the external or internal environment or from within the brain (thoughts, images, memories). The computation of stimulus significance takes place prior to and independent of conscious awareness, with only the computational products…
Emotion
A revolution in the science of emotion has emerged in recent decades, with the potential to create a paradigm shift in decision theories. The research reveals that emotions constitute potent, pervasive, predictable, sometimes harmful and sometimes ...Read More
Emotion Circuits in the Brain
The field of neuroscience has, after a long period of looking the other way, again embraced emotion as an important research area. Much of the progress has come from studies of fear, and especially fear conditioning. This work has pinpointed the amygdala as an important component of the system involved in the acquisition, storage, and expression of fear memory and has elucidated in detail how stimuli enter, travel through, and exit the amygdala. …
The Emotional Brain, Fear, and the Amygdala
Fear and the Brain
Jacek Debiec and Joseph LeDoux Fear and the Brain FEAR IS A NATURAL PART OF LIFE. IT OCCURS WHENEVER WE ARE THREATENED. Threats come in many forms. A snake on the ground in front of you is a biologically prepared threat, and so is being face-to-face with an angry human. Evolution has put this kind of information into our brains as a way of dealing with recurring and common themes. When we encoun ter them we have the familiar fight/flight respons…
Contributions of the Amygdala to Emotion Processing
Unconscious and conscious contributions to the emotional and cognitive aspects of emotions
Rethinking the Emotional Brain
Feelings
Traditionally, we define “emotions” as feelings and “feelings” as conscious experiences. Conscious experiences are not readily studied in animals. However, animal research is essential to understanding the brain mechanisms underlying psychological function. So how can we make study mechanisms related to emotion in animals? I argue that our approach to this topic has been flawed and propose a way out of the dilemma: to separate processes that cont…
Using Neuroscience to Help Understand Fear and Anxiety
Tremendous progress has been made in basic neuroscience in recent decades. One area that has been especially successful is research on how the brain detects and responds to threats. Such studies have demonstrated comparable patterns of brain-behavior relationships underlying threat processing across a range of mammalian species, including humans. This would seem to be an ideal body of information for advancing our understanding of disorders in wh…
A higher-order theory of emotional consciousness
Significance Although emotions, or feelings, are the most significant events in our lives, there has been relatively little contact between theories of emotion and emerging theories of consciousness in cognitive science. In this paper we challenge the conventional view, which argues that emotions are innately programmed in subcortical circuits, and propose instead that emotions are higher-order states instantiated in cortical circuits. What diffe…
Understanding the Higher-Order Approach to Consciousness
The higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness has often been misunderstood by critics. Here, we clarify its position on several issues, and distinguish it from other views, such as the global workspace theory (GWT) and early sensory models (e.g., first-order local recurrency theories). For example, HOT has been criticized for overintellectualizing consciousness. We show that, while higher-order states are cognitively assembled, the requirements …
Opportunities and challenges for a maturing science of consciousness
The rise of affectivism
The Four Realms of Existence
Deep history and beyond
The commentaries by Ren, de Carvalho, Gabriel, Reber and Baluška raise interesting and timely questions about the views I expressed in The Deep History of Ourselves. I begin my response with an Overview of my perspective, and how it has changed in the three years since publication. This is important since some of the commentators’ concerns may be assuaged by some of these points. Other specific issues raised by each commentator are addressed sepa…
The Deep History of Ourselves
The essence of who we are depends on our brains. They enable us to think, to feel joy and sorrow, communicate through speech, reflect on the moments of our lives, and to anticipate, plan for, and worry about our imagined futures. Although some of our abilities are comparatively new, key features of our behavior have deep roots that can be traced to the beginning of life. By following the story of behavior, step-by-step, over its roughly four-bill…
Psychology (15 works) · Cognitive psychology (12 works) · Memory and Neural Mechanisms (10 works) · Neuroscience (9 works) · Cognitive science (8 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Cognition (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Feeling (5 works) · Consciousness (4 works)