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Emotional lateralization is the asymmetrical representation of emotional control and processing in the brain. There is evidence for the lateralization of other brain functions as well. Emotions are complex and involve a variety of physical and cognitive responses, many of which are not well understood.
In the first neuroimaging meta-analysis of emotion, Phan et al. (2002) analyzed the results of 55 peer reviewed studies between January 1990 and December 2000 to determine if the emotions of fear, sadness, disgust, anger, and happiness were consistently associated with activity in specific brain regions.
He postulated the limbic system as the brain's center of emotions, including the hippocampus and amygdala. Developing observations made by Papez, he hypothesized that the limbic system had evolved in early mammals to control fight-or-flight responses and react to both emotionally pleasurable and painful sensations.
Other emotions like fear and anxiety long thought to be exclusively generated by the most primitive parts of the brain (stem) and more associated to the fight-or-flight responses of behavior, have also been associated as adaptive expressions of defensive behavior whenever a threat is encountered.
The dmPFC's role in human emotional regulation decision making (decision conflict perspective – levels of indecision) e.g. Picking between similar items, acting in novel situations. There is also evidence of an inverse relationship between activation in the dPFC areas and activation in emotionally activated brain areas. [6]
The ACC area in the brain is associated with many functions that are correlated with conscious experience. Greater ACC activation levels were present in more emotionally aware female participants when shown short 'emotional' video clips. [24]
These emotional effects were no longer present when the optic thalamus was removed from the animals; thus, it was concluded that this region plays a significant role in the expression of emotions. Location of the human diencephalon (red), a brain area implicated in the sham rage response in cats studied by Cannon and Britton.
In neuroscience, the reward system is a collection of brain structures and neural pathways that are responsible for reward-related cognition, including associative learning (primarily classical conditioning and operant reinforcement), incentive salience (i.e., motivation and "wanting", desire, or craving for a reward), and positively-valenced emotions, particularly emotions that involve ...