MIND, BRAIN AND BIOCHEMISTRY 395 



this involves considerable biochemical activity. At this point 

 the cogitative sense (or the intellect) may apprehend the object 

 or event perceived as good or harmful to the individual. 



The judgment estimating the perception to be good or 

 harmful evokes an emotional response toward or away from 

 the object. Hand in hand with this affective, or emotional 

 response, there is a purely physiological and biochemical res- 

 ponse which may involve a host of chemical changes in the 

 body. Norepinephrine and epinephrine, for example, are lib- 

 erated from nerve endings and from adrenal medulla in various 

 proportions, depending on whether fear and anxiety, or anger 

 and daring are the primary emotional components. Concerning 

 human subjects, it has been reliably reported that normal 

 urinary excretion of norepinephrine with increased secretion of 

 epinephrine is associated with anxious and passive emotional 

 reactions. ^^ Active and aggressive emotional displays were 

 found to be associated with an increased secretion of norepine- 

 phrine. Other investigators have suggested that anxiety is 

 mediated by epinephrine, and anger by norepinephrine.^*^ Much 

 research still needs to be done before any definite associations 

 can be made with various emotions. One item, however, does 

 stand out: the biochemical changes can sometimes be induced 

 without thereby producing the true emotion. It has been 

 noticed, for example, that continuous infusion of epinephrine 

 can produce subjective feelings very similar to those found 

 during anxiety, and yet it would not be sufficient to produce 

 the emotional anxiety state .^' On the other hand, norepine- 

 phrine cannot produce comparable subjective experiences so 

 as to be related to the emotion of anger.^^ All of these inves- 



^^ F. Elmadjian, " Excretion and Metabolism of Epinephrine and Norepinephrine 

 in Man," in F. A. Gibbs, ed., Molecules and Mental Health (Philadelphia: Lippin- 

 cott, 1959) , pp. 77-99. 



^* D. H. Funkenstein, S. H. King and M. E. Drolette, Mastery of Stress (Cam- 

 bridge: Harvard, 1957), pp. 19-25. 



" D. R. Hawkins, J. T. Monroe, M. G. Sandifer and C. R. Vernon, " Psychological 

 and Physiological Responses to the Continuous Epinephrine Infusion — An Approach 

 to the Study of the Affect, Anxiety," m West and Greenblatt, op. cit., pp. 40-52. 



^» Ibid., p. 48. 



