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by tvawnz 3971 days ago
Interesting that one of the opening premises of this piece is: "Most people, including many scientists, believe that emotions are distinct, locatable entities inside us — but they’re not. Searching for emotions in this form is as misguided as looking for cerebral clarinets and oboes."

Meanwhile, this article was linked on HN a few months ago where they essentially mapped the locations of emotions: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/12/30/25831311...

from the second article: "Each emotion activates a distinct set of body parts, he thinks, and the mind's recognition of those patterns helps us consciously identify that emotion."

OP does mention this, but the thesis is that emotions and responses are not universal, which is contra to the thesis of the second.

1 comments

The IDL study worked with brain imaging data and tried to correlate a particular part of the brain with emotion. The NPR article relates a Finnish study where people experiencing emotion were asked to map our where they felt different emotions. Looks like apples v. oranges to me.