Princeton University Press
How Do You Feel?
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About this book
A book that fundamentally changes how neuroscientists and psychologists categorize sensations and understand the origins and significance of human feelings
How Do You Feel? brings together startling evidence from neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry to present revolutionary new insights into how our brains enable us to experience the range of sensations and mental states known as feelings. Drawing on his own cutting-edge research, neurobiologist Bud Craig has identified an area deep inside the mammalian brain—the insular cortex—as the place where interoception, or the processing of bodily stimuli, generates feelings. He shows how this crucial pathway for interoceptive awareness gives rise in humans to the feeling of being alive, vivid perceptual feelings, and a subjective image of the sentient self across time. Craig explains how feelings represent activity patterns in our brains that signify emotions, intentions, and thoughts, and how integration of these patterns is driven by the unique energy needs of the hominid brain. He describes the essential role of feelings and the insular cortex in such diverse realms as music, fluid intelligence, and bivalent emotions, and relates these ideas to the philosophy of William James and even to feelings in dogs.
How Do You Feel? is also a compelling insider's account of scientific discovery, one that takes readers behind the scenes as the astonishing answer to this neurological puzzle is pursued and pieced together from seemingly unrelated fields of scientific inquiry. This book will fundamentally alter the way that neuroscientists and psychologists categorize sensations and understand the origins and significance of human feelings.
Author / Editor information
Reviews
"An engaging and uniquely personal perspective on the neurobiology of feelings. One gains a clear, comprehensive, and integrative view of the evolution and future of the field through the lens of a creative neuroscientist and scholar."—Helen S. Mayberg, Emory University School of Medicine
"In this provocative and deeply creative book, Craig shares his journey of scientific discovery to reveal an insight that is both simple and sweeping: the nervous system contains a sensory pathway that is built for regulating homeostasis, and it functions as a fundamental, organizing feature of the mind. Many of the psychological phenomena that we think of as independent and separate—metabolism, emotion, stress, pain, and time perception—are all united, in one way or another, by this sensory pathway. After reading this book, you will think differently about the nature of consciousness, and, ultimately, what it means to be human."—Lisa Feldman Barrett, University Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Northeastern University
"In this engaging book, Craig develops a revolutionary new approach to how we think about emotions. How Do You Feel? provides a compelling and comprehensive view of a major shift in the field. It reflects Craig's almost encyclopedic knowledge, and is an impressive collection and integration of scientific facts."—Martin P. Paulus, University of California, San Diego
Topics
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Frontmatter
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Contents
v -
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List of Figures and Plates
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List of Boxes
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Preface
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1. An Introduction to Interoception
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2. Feelings From the Body Viewed as Emotions
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3. The Origin of the Interoceptive Pathway
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4. Interoception and Homeostasis
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5. The Interoceptive Pathway to the Insular Cortex
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6. Bodily Feelings Emerge in the Insular Cortex
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7. Feelings about Thoughts, Time, and Me
216 -
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8. Feelings and Emotions on Both Sides of the Brain
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9. A Few more Thoughts about Feelings
280 -
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Acknowledgments
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Abbreviations
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Glossary
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Reference List
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Illustration Credits
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Index
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