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The Emotional Brain

The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life

By Joseph Ledoux

What happens in our brains to make us feel fear, love, hate, anger, joy? Do we control our emotions, or do they control us? Do animals have emotions? How can traumatic experiences in early childhood influence adult behavior, even though we have no conscious memory of them? In The Emotional Brain, Joseph LeDoux investigates the origins of human emotions and explains that many exist as part of complex neural systems that evolved to enable us to survive.

One of the principal researchers profiled in Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, LeDoux is a leading authority in the field of neural science. In this provocative book, he explores the brain mechanisms underlying our emotions -- mechanisms that are only now being revealed.
Joseph Ledoux

Joseph LeDoux is the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science in the Center for Neural Science at New York University. He has been awarded both a Merit Award and a Research Scientist Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, as well as grants from the National Science Foundation and the American Heart Association. He lives in New York City.

"Joseph LeDoux is a superb guide to that ultimate frontier in understanding our emotional life, the brain."
-- Daniel Goldman, author of Emotional Intelligence

"The Emotional Brain is an excellent introduction to the strange history of the neurobiology of emotion and a preview of what lies ahead."
-- Antonio R. Damasio, Scientific American

"Engrossing and engaging..."
-- Richard Restak, The New York Times Book Review

"Highly accessible...LeDoux's musical and literary references reveal a man clearly in touch with his own emotional feelings. All said, The Emotional Brain is a stimulating and thoughtful work and is essential reading for any serious student of human emotion."
-- Raymond J. Dolan, Nature

"[The Emotional Brain] is vivid and convincing in its description of the central mechanisms of emotion, and is directly applicable to understanding anxiety, the most common ingredient of emotional disorders. It's a terrifically good book."
-- Keith Oatley, New Scientist

The Emotional Brain

The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life

By Joseph Ledoux