In their theory of the “extended body,” Froese and Fuchs ( 2012 ) argue that “inter- bodily resonance between individuals” (p. 205) gives rise to self-sustaining interaction patterns that go beyond the behavioral capacities of isolated individuals.
Caracciolo ( 2012 ) argues that socioculturally mediated meaning-making can be accounted for in enactivist terms through the production and interpretation of narra- tives. De Preester ( 2005 ) argues that body image and schema are embodied in the structuring effect of neuronal organization, bodily experience, and the formation of the subject. I speculate that the intrauterine environment provides the developing fetus with his or her fi rst intersubjective, co-creative, consensual, organismic expe- rience from which maternal hormonal, autonomic, and affective states are imprinted during the period of gestational bonding.
and the subjective knower, pure ego, or the I . The spiritual me was “composed of the more active feeling states of consciousness; the core and nucleus of our self, a direct revelation of the living substance of the soul” (p. 43), while the I was “the agent, soul, transcendental ego, spirit; or thinker behind the passing state of consciousness lending unity to the passing of thought” (p. 63). The identity found by the “I” in its
“me” was only a loosely construed thing, an identity “on the whole” (p. 72) that was divided into mutations of the self based on alterations of memory. Experience had no inner duplicity between subject and object. In his theory of mind-stuff, James posited a relationship between the bare phenomenon or the immediately know thing and the phenomenon of changing brain states or the pulse of consciousness that is cognizant of its object. He argued that the entire brain process is the state of con- sciousness, the soul a medium upon which these processes combine their effects.
But, how, or why, no mortal may ever know.
Embodiment of Emotion . James’ ( 1884 ) theory of emotion is found in his essay
“What is an Emotion?,” in which he argues for a visceral basis for the emotions as apperceived physiological responses to our perceptions and describes embodiment as the feelings of innervation and the proprioceptive impulses associated with our breath. Emotions were the feelings associated with the immediate perception of an exciting fact as well as the muscular and visceral changes: “… bodily changes fol- low directly the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact… our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion ” (pp. 189–190). For James, emotion was purely vis- ceral; it originated in the body and was not cognitive. In 1884, both James and Lange published similar theories:
An object stimulates one or more receptors, afferent impulses pass to the cortex and the object is perceived; thereupon currents run down to muscles and viscera and alter them in complex ways; afferent impulses from these disturbed organs course back to the cortex and when there perceived transform the ‘object-simply-apprehended’ to the ‘object-emotionally- felt.’ (Cannon, 1931 , p. 281)
Challenging the James-Lange theory, Cannon’s study of the fl ight or fl ight response proposed that visceral changes were to too slow to be a source of emo- tional feelings, but instead the hypothalamus and its neuronal connections to the brainstem, through the secretions of the pituitary gland were the seat of emotion.
The thalamocortical pathways were the coordinating center for emotional expres- sion and affective experiences sent to the viscera and skeletal muscles.
Following Cannon’s work, Papez ( 1937 ) proposed that components of the limbic circuitry form part of a multisynaptic pathway, classically known as Papez’s circuit, and are responsible for the expression of emotion. He proposed that the mechanism of operation for emotional regulation began at the hypothalamus (adaptive function/
human drives); the cingulate cortex projects to the hippocampus (memory), and the hippocampus projects to the hypothalamus, by way of the fornix. Papez thought that hypothalamic effects reached the cerebral cortex through the anterior thalamic nuclei, which relays sensory impulses such that a stimulus affects the thalamus, the sensory cortex, and the cingulate cortex—creating a feeling— then the cingulate cortex signals the hippocampus and the hypothalamus, leading to a bodily response.
However, Papez was missing an important component of emotional processing—the human amygdala.
Offering evidence that emotion occurs throughout the organism, Pert ( 1999 ) pro- posed that the emotional brain is a somatosensory, non-synaptic, neurochemical gestalt providing an exchange of information that is not confi ned to the classical locations of the amygdala, hippocampus, and the hypothalamus, but instead, as Schmitt, molecular biologist at MIT discovered, is a parasynaptic or secondary parallel system where chemical substances circulated through the body to reach their target-cell receptor. What we experience as an emotion or feeling was thus a mechanism for activating a particular neuronal circuit simultaneously throughout the brain and body affecting behaviors that involve the whole person. These conclu- sions were supported by the work in biofeedback on the conscious control of auto- nomic states by Green, Green, and Walters ( 1970 ) who found that change in physiological state is accompanied by change in mental-emotional state, conscious or unconscious, and the converse is also true.
What we understand today, however, is that the neurophysiology of emotion involves bidirectional communication between the cerebral cortex and the limbic system or corticolimbic system . The orbital and medial prefrontal cortexes 13 in the anterior frontal lobe communicate with the limbic structures (amygdala, hippocam- pus, mammillary bodies, and basal ganglia) and the hypothalamus in the processing of memory, the regulation of food-mood responses, attention-alertness, and human drives. These systems communicate by up- and downregulating the neurotransmit- ters GABA and glutamate, which inhibit or excite arousal, while serotonin, dopa- mine, and norepinephrine combine their effects to integrate thought, emotion, felt sense, and memory through the symbols of language and mental imagery.
The hypothalamus, master gland and internal watcher of the homeostasis of the organism, located below the thalamus on both sides of the third ventricle, unites the nervous and hormonal systems. Through its connection to the pituitary gland, the hypothalamus regulates the endocrine system, governs the autonomic nervous system, and communicates via a two-way pathway with the limbic system and the cerebral cortex. The limbic system is then informed by sensory input through the fast relay nuclei of the thalamus and the amygdala and the slower pathways of the parahippocampal gyrus.
To briefl y return to the missing element in the Papez circuit, the amygdala, which processes aggression, fear, memory, sexual arousal, and pain in moment-to-moment subjective experience, we now know that the amygdala has bidirectional connec- tions with the hypothalamus and receives signals from all parts of the limbic system and the neocortex, especially the auditory and visual association areas. Then the hippocampus, responsible for decision-making, determines the importance of sen- sory information and transmits signals that allow verbal and symbolic memory to become long term. Given that spatial resolution in neuroimaging presently limits our ability to make claims about localization of function for subdivisions of the human amygdala, neuroscientists, extrapolating from animal studies, have discov- ered a relationship between the mind and the brain: it is based on the person’s per- ception of and ability to fi nd meaning and signifi cance in their experience.