Our brains contain north of 85 billion neurons, each wired to some 10,000 other neurons in various parts of the brain-which means we have hundreds of trillions of synapses, any number of which are firing at any given moment. Barrett sees the brain as more like a self-driving car sporting a massive onboard computer. Giants of the field, such as University of California professor emeritus Paul Ekman, have built their careers around connecting basic emotions-fear, anger, surprise, disgust, joy-to facial expressions.Įxperimental psychology tends to make us think of the experience of perception as similar to that of reactive lab rats. Charles Darwin, in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, translated the classical view into what has become a pillar of modern psychology: that people emote in biologically rooted, universally recognizable ways. Since at least the time of Plato, emotions have been viewed as reflexive responses that we struggle to govern via our capacity to reason. We don't feel like we're the architects of our own experience."īarrett, a psychology professor at Northeastern who also holds an appointment in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, begins making her case by critiquing what she calls the "classical view" of the brain and emotions. "We don't feel like we're in control at all.
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