In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind

by Eric R. Kandel

Based on this idea, James and the Danish psychologist Carl Lange proposed that the conscious experience of emotion occurs only after the cortex has received signals about changes in one’s physiological state. In other words, conscious feelings are preceded by certain unconscious physiological changes—an increase or decrease in blood pressure, heart rate, and muscular tension. Thus, when you see a fire, you feel afraid because your cortex has just received signals about your racing heart, knocking knees, and sweaty palms. James wrote: “We feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike or tremble because we are sorry, angry or fearful, as the case may be.” According to this view, emotions are cognitive responses to information from bodily states mediated in good part by the autonomic nervous system. Our everyday experience confirms that information from the body contributes to emotional experience. Experimental evidence soon supported some aspects of the James-Lange theory. For example, objectively distinguishable emotions are correlated with specific patterns of autonomic, endocrine, and voluntary responses. Furthermore, people whose spinal cord has been accidentally severed, cutting off feedback from the autonomic nervous system in regions of the body below the injury, appear to experience less intense emotions. With time it became clear, however, that the James-Lange theory explains only one aspect of emotional b...