Main description:

This book attempts to clarify a relatively new problem in the area of brain-behavior relationships, namely the link between emotions and hemispheric specialization. The contributions by leading specialists integrate theoretical models of emotions in normal subjects with results of experimental investigations conducted in patients with unilateral brain lesions. The communicative aspects of emotions and the inner experience of emotions as well as the concomitant autonomous changes are separately investigated and discussed.

Contents:

Remembering Giuseppe Moruzzi.- Features of Emotional Behavior Relevant to Neurobiology and Theories of Emotions.- Neurobiological and Psychophysiological Aspects of Emotions.- The Psychobiology of Emotions: The Animal Side of Human Feelings.- Some Anatomical Substrates of Emotion, and their Bihemispheric Coordination.- Neurochemistry of the Emotions: Behavioural and Physiological Correlates of Catecholaminergic Systems.- Facial Expressive and Psychophysiological Correlates of Emotion.- Components of Emotional Behavior Disrupted in Patients with Unilateral Brain Lesions.- What can be Learned from Lateral Differences in Emotional Processing?.- The Meaning of Emotional Disturbances Resulting from Unilateral Brain Injury.- Recognition of Emotions in Patients with Unilateral Brain Damage.- Disturbance of Facial Emotional Expressions in Brain-Damaged Subjects.- Autonomic Reactivity and Facial Expression of Emotion in Brain-Damaged Patients.- Psychopathology and Hemispheric Specialization.- Neural Substrates of Thought and Affective Disorders.- Reaction Times and Mental States.- A Model of Adaptive Behavior Related to Cerebral Participation in Emotional Control.