Take 88

 

Another book that I read this week was How Emotions Are Made. An impressing piece of research this work goes against the classical view on emotion and argues that we are architects of our emotional experience even if we are not conscious of it. All of our concepts regarding emotion are constructed since birth and we express them differently. What I found refreshing was Darwin's theory mentioned in the book according to which all species of animals are comprised of unique individuals with varying characteristics. The book is stuffy in the first part as I struggled to understand the theory of constructed emotion proposed by the author but it gets better in the second part where it mentions the US legal system, the emotional lives of animals, how to live a healthy life, explanations for depression and some observations on the brain's default mode network. It definitely requires a second reading to help cement the accumulated knowledge: so much of it in one book. Highly recommended for neuroscience aficionados.