2022 Volume 59 Issue 2 Pages 197-203
Both the James-Lange theory (1884, 85) and the Cannon-Bard theory (1927, 28) were proposed in regard to the causal relationship between emotion and autonomic activity; the former insisted that emotion was formed by the change in visceral conditions, while the latter argued that emotion influenced autonomic activity and not vice versa. The conflict between the both theories was derived from the definition of the autonomic nervous system by Langley (1898), who asserted that the autonomic nervous system did not include central and afferent fibers. Being free from “Langley’s curse”, I herein describe the real history of autonomic science concerning the central autonomic network (CAN) and the autonomic afferents as well as the causal relationship between emotion and autonomic activity. Supporting the James-Lange theory, Bechterew (1887) first clarified that emotion was evoked in the thalamus, which was a common channel of afferent inputs into the brain. L. R. Müller, an academic opponent of Langley, maintained that the causal relationship between emotion and autonomic activity was bidirectional (1906), and that the both were originated in the neural network within the diencephalon (1929). More recently, Prechtl and Powley (1990) stated that afferent impulses from the visceral organs (interoception) passed through the spino-thamamic tract, which was considered as the autonomic afferents. Craig (2002) confirmed that the afferent fibers from the visceral organs and the sympathetic fibers constituted the CAN in the brain, and suggested that both emotion and autonomic activity were concurrently generated within the CAN.
