Evolution of thought and emotion

Abstract: What started as a self-scrutinizing exercise turned into an extraordinary volume on a journey in search of the origin of survival mechanisms and consciousness. Joseph LeDoux — the undisputed guru of emotions and the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at New York University — declares in The Deep History of Ourselves that the notion of an ‘amygdala fear center’ that became not only a scientific doctrine but also a cultural meme is dead wrong. Since his writings contributed to this mischaracterization, LeDoux feels that he has some explaining to do. He does this in the form of beautifully composed prose of 400 pages. Without hesitation, he tells the reader up front that, in order to accomplish his goals, a “radical approach is needed”. This is done in the form of two interconnected journeys, the first of which is the evolution of survival circuits: “there is indeed good evidence that the same brain systems control survival behaviors in humans and other mammals”. However, these are not the systems that are responsible for the conscious feelings that we experience when we engage in such behaviors and, therefore, he postulates the need of another system that is uniquely human. To contrast these two lines of ideas, the author reaches back through four billion years of natural history. The elaborate discussion on our long past is done not for the sake of cataloguing facts but to seek answers to a complex problem: the origin of our phenomenal or access consciousness. In the process, two new LeDouxs unfold: LeDoux the evolutionary biologist, evo–devo guy and a consciousness expert.