EMOTIONAL BEHAVIOR 



[ 53i 



chological sophistication would hardly seem to 

 justify a more restrictive or provincial approach the 

 dictates of conventional or traditional usage will 

 determine, in large part, the character of our be- 

 havioral coverage. There can be little doubt that 

 the results of future research efforts are likely to re- 

 quire extensive modification and reorientation of 

 past and present thinking in this area. But the some- 

 what descriptive behavioristic framework within 

 which much of the laboratory work on emotional 

 behavior has proceeded should permit some realistic 

 assessment of the past history, present status and 

 future perspectives of a most complex psychophys- 

 iological problem. 



SOME HISTORICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL 

 CONSIDERATIONS 



For the most part, the measurement and analysis 

 of bodily changes associated with emotional be- 

 havior have focused upon peripheral response 

 mechanisms related principally to integration by the 

 autonomic nervous system, the cerebrospinal system 

 and the endocrine system. Dunbar's recent revision 

 of her volume on Emotions and Bodilx Changes (110) 

 provides an exhaustive 4,717-itcm classified bib- 

 liography in this area. Several oilier authors have 

 also described techniques for recording such periph- 

 eral changes and presented detailed experimental 

 analyses of the characteristic physiological processes 

 associated with more or less broadly defined af- 

 fective phenomena (5, 70, 89, 95, 97, 146, 191, 228- 

 230, 245, 248, 262, 266, 324, 392, 403, 404). Typi- 

 cally, studies in this general area have emphasized 

 the relationship of the emotions to such peripheral 

 phenomena as the electrical response of the skin (88, 

 '^3, 358, 390, 391), arterial pressure and blood 

 volume (88, 239, 317, 337), electrocardiogram and 

 heart rate (2g8, 317, 389, 396), respiration (66, 123) 

 skin temperature (285, 286), pupillary changes (21, 

 253), salivary secretion (399, 400), pilomotor effects 

 (250), dermographia (392), skin sweating (344, 393), 

 changes in the chemical composition of blood, saliva 

 and urine (104, 105, 140, 146, 149, 188, 261, 305, 

 399), gastrointestinal activity (27, 70, 261, 263, 264, 

 367), metabolic rate (248), muscle tension (65, 84, 

 94, 318), tremor (24, 254), and even eye blink and 

 eye movements (249). In addition, of course, au- 

 tonomic, endocrine and neurohumoral relation- 

 ships have been extensively and somewhat more 

 directly analyzed in the quest for a better under- 



standing of emotional processes (69, 71-76, 146-148, 

 353). Certainly a comprehensive view of the affective 

 process must not fail to take account of the intimate 

 relationship between such peripheral physiological 

 response expressions of emotion and the more central 

 neural participants which provide the focus for the 

 present neurophysiological analvsis. 



Methodologically, clinical and experimental ob- 

 servations related to central neural organization in 

 emotional behavior have emerged from four major 

 sources: a) laboratory ablation studies involving 

 central nervous system structures, h) direct electrical 

 or chemical stimulation of central nervous system 

 structures, c) electrical recording from central nervous 

 system tissue and d) clinical, including neurosurgical, 

 observations. For many centuries, of course, more or 

 less informal accounts of clinical changes in emo- 

 tional behavior associated with pathological in- 

 volvement of central nervous system function (e.u. 

 epilepsy i have emerged from both medical and 

 literary sources. It was not until the latter half of 

 the nineteenth century, however, that the clinical 

 acumen of Hughlings Jackson and the consequent 

 dedication of men like Ferrier and Sherrington 

 began to provide the Inundations for systematic 

 analysis of neurological mechanisms in emotional 

 behavior and for subsequent emphasis upon de- 

 velopment of the more experimental approaches 

 which will receive primary emphasis in our present 

 treatment. Since that time, a somewhat voluminous 

 clinical literature on the psychological consequences 

 of brain damage and related neurological disorders 

 (83, 96, 126, 131, 168, 214, jib, 255, 278, 362) may 

 be seen to have contributed both directly and in- 

 directly to our understanding of central nervous 

 system participation in emotional behavior. Neces- 

 sarily, coverage of this clinical material will be 

 highly selective within the relatively limited experi- 

 mental scope of the present treatment, although 

 related sections of this volume on autonomic activi- 

 ties and transactional mechanisms should provide a 

 somewhat broader factual analysis of data pertinent 

 to this general source. 



Historically, ablation techniques can be seen to 

 have provided the earliest laboratory approaches to 

 the experimental analysis of neural mechanisms in 

 emotional behavior. In the course of their more 

 broadly conceived neurophysiological inquiries into 

 cortical function, for example, Brown & Schafer (67), 

 reporting in the Philosophical Transactions as early as 

 1888, described 'emotional' changes in rhesus monkeys 

 following temporal lobe lesions involving relative!) 



