How the body and brain shape emotion?: Toward integrative understanding from neuroimaging and neuropsychology

Abstract

  Recent advances in neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies can allow us to understand more close ly about the underlying mechanisms of human emotion. Essential points for clarifying the functions of emo tion are twofold: (1) the necessity to focus on autonomic bodily responses in addition to the correlates of behavior and brain activities, (2) the fundamental needs of addressing attention to the network involved in realizing emotion rather than focusing on relevant focal brain regions. In this article, some concepts around emotion were first reconsidered and the functions of the relevant network were sorted out, and finally the functional and neural mechanisms of empathy were briefly reviewed.