In his bookThe emotional brain, LeDoux explains how his interest in this study originated:? My father was a butcher, and I spent most of my childhood around meat. At an early age I learned what the inside of a cow looks like; the part that interested me most was the slimy, wrinkled brain. Now, many years later, I spend my days – and some nights – trying to figure out how brains work; And what I most want to know about them is how they produce emotions. But everything that is daring about addressing issues such as love, joy or sadness in his book is cautious in this interview so as not to go beyond what is scientifically proven.
–Saying of a person that he is more emotional than rational can have a pejorative undertone. But in recent years the emotional seems to have undergone some rehabilitation. Why?
-In science it has been very difficult to study emotion. Instead, scientists were able to study reason by beginning to investigate memory, perception, attention, and thus it was possible to make great strides in understanding these questions. But the concept of emotion has been something too intangible, because there is nothing more subjective in terms of perception than that of an emotion. What I have tried to show is that it is possible to study emotion in the way that reason has been studied; we can analyze how the brain processes emotional stimuli to produce an emotional response, leaving aside all subjective aspects. What happens is that some people tell us that then we are no longer investigating the emotion. But I don’t care what we call it; what interests me is to study it.
–And what then is emotion for science? How is it different from the idea that people on the street have of it?
-Scientific knowledge of emotion in some way contributes to what the general public considers emotion. I have a hard time explaining this without a drawing.
LeDoux then takes a piece of paper and, after drawing the stimulus-amygdala-response sequence, explains that “the fear stimulus activates the amygdala, which produces the fear response. So where is the feeling of fear? In the past it was thought that the stimulus produced the feeling of fear and this is what caused the response. But now we think that this is not the case, and that what happens is that the stimulus reaches the amygdala and from there the response is produced on the one hand and the feeling of fear on the other?
–Which facet weighs more in behavior, rational or emotional?
-I believe that emotion is stronger than reason, because it is easy for the former to control reflection, and instead it is very difficult for rational thought to control emotion. When we feel anxiety or depression, reason may say enough, but it almost never manages to eliminate them.
–Do you mean that emotion comes to control thought?
-Yes.
Take paper and pencil again and draw two areas of the brain, the neocortex and the amygdala, as two opposite poles, and then draw three arrows that go from the neocortex to the amygdala and nine that go in the opposite direction. And he argues: “There are many more nerve fibers in this sense – from the amygdala to the cortex – than in this other – the other way around. So when the psychotherapist is used, it is to try to reinforce the signals that go from the neocortex to the The amygdala. In contrast, drug therapy helps the communication pathways that go from the amygdala to the cortex have less power, helping to weaken the signals that go in this direction. “
–Can we say that there is, even if it is provisional, a scientific theory of emotions that explains what they are and what they are for?
-To know what the purpose of emotions is, we would have to read minds throughout evolution. And, of course, there is no fossil record of emotions.
–But what are emotions supposed to do?
– With fear it is clear, and the only thing that I study is fear (laughs). But it is much better to be concrete and specific, because if you generalize you create confusion in a very complex area like this.
–Can we speak of primary and secondary emotions, or universal and individual?
-On the one hand there is the fear of snakes, spiders or objects, such as elevators. They are primary fears that can cause phobias. There are also factors that do not have a threatening intrinsic value, such as a street corner in Barcelona, but where you have been assaulted, so that the new stimuli create new fears. These are basic answers. But then there are other secondary fears, such as the fear of being afraid, which are completely different types of emotions.
–And what about other types of supposedly basic emotions such as joy or sadness?
-I do not speak of those emotions, because I have only studied fear, and I study it because it is practical. For decades, research was very difficult, since there was no concept of emotion. But because we have focused on a single emotion and have stayed very focused on it, we have been able to move forward.
–Are the fears of men and women the same?
– Research has been done on the differences between the fear of men and women, unfortunately I am not very familiar with them.
–But they seem to exist.
– I have not examined this subject, I have not read the literature on the matter. I know there are differences in fear between male and female rats, and this is related to hormones. But I don’t know how this would relate to the differences between men’s and women’s fears.
–Do you think that all this research will result in drugs or pills against fear, for example, but also against other types of emotions?
-My research work in particular will not lead us to a pill, but perhaps others will.
–Is shyness related to fear? Could there be a pill against shyness?
-Humm. It is news that has been read in the newspapers.
– And what did that pill do?
• It acts on serotonin (a brain neurotransmitter). Yes it could be possible, because if you reduce fear and anxiety you tend to be less shy. But it is difficult to answer, because we do not know how research on animals can be translated into humans. We also do not know if it is worth it for a shy child, for example, to be less shy but live with an altered serotonin system. Nor what consequences would taking pills of this type have for, say, 20 years.
–Nobel laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini said that brain and mind are the same thing. Another famous neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, in his book Descartes’s error establishes the equation that mind equals brain plus body. What do you say?
-I don’t think that the body should necessarily be included in that equation, because then we could say that the body simply reflects the brain’s reaction. If we include the body we could add the environment and in the end it turns out that everything influences the mind. I would rather say that the mind is an aspect of brain function, but some of these aspects are not mind.
–How could one explain what the amygdala is for? Can you live without tonsil?
-Yes, there are people who live without tonsil, but it is difficult to explain what it is for. The amygdala is useful for triggering quick responses to dangerous situations. But surely it is much more harmful to remove the amygdala from a rat than from a person, because a person can conceptualize the danger and formulate a plan to react to it. So if you are in danger, you know what it is and you rationalize it. Let’s say that people may not have the instinctual response but the cognitive response that compensates for the lack of the amygdala. And the earlier you lose the amygdala in your life, the more time you have to make up for its loss.
–In this decade of the nineties that is now ending and was proclaimed as the decade of the brain, what steps have been taken in understanding this organ?
-I believe that great progress has been made in the biology of memory, emotion or the molecular genetics of certain diseases, such as Huntington’s chorea. A major advance has also been made in understanding brain development. Now we know that the brain has the capacity to generate new neurons in some areas, and this can lead us to develop therapies against diseases such as Parkinson’s disease or memory disorders.
–Do you think a global theory of the brain could be achieved in the next few years? What contribution would you like to make?
-I think there is currently too much fragmentation. There are different modules for memory, for cognition, for emotion … And I think what we need is to integrate them. At the moment I am writing a new book that somehow tries to do it and is entitledThe synaptic self.
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This interview was published in January 2000, in number 224 of VERY Interesting.
