In article <17583-39EDE024-10 at storefull-167.iap.bryant.webtv.net>,
Xoxana at webtv.net (Xuxa Thorson) wrote:
> Irrational attitudes come from the
> reptilian brain, or basal ganglia.
Please, please, _please_ stop spreading this outmoded view of
affectivity; it smacks of antiquated philosophies of mind that were
couched in a false dichotomy between "the passions" and "reason".
Read some articles below for a more accurate representation of
emotional systems in the brain -- you'll be surprised to discover
that much of our so-called "higher cognitive functioning" is
covariant with affective "processing." Emotions are are _not_
"primitive" or "irrational" -- they are, rather, much more complex
and "rational" as a vital component of the human mind.
Geoffrey Schoenbaum, Andrea A. Chiba and Michela Gallagher,
"Orbitofrontal Cortex and Basolateral Amygdala Encode Expected
Outcomes During Learning." (Nature Neuroscience 1:2, 1998) 155-9.
Antoine Bechara, Hanna Damasio, Antonio R. Damasio, and Gregory P. Lee,
"Different Contributions of the Human Amygdala and Ventromedial
Prefrontal Cortex to Decision-Making." (The Journal of Neuroscience
19:13, 1999) 5473-5481.
Critchley, Hugo D., Elliott, Rebecca, Mathias, Christopher J., and Dolan
Raymond J., "Neural Activity Relating to Generation and
Representation of Galvanic Skin Conductance Responses: A Functional
Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study." (The Journal of Neuroscience 20:8,
2000) 3033-3040.
Zach N.