ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationships between psychological and neuroendocrine variables in two metabolically bipolar types of action and experience: vigorous exercise and meditation. A biological basis of behaviour is considered to be axiomatic in many circles. Physiological psychology, unlike other areas in psychology, never really relinquished its origins in 19th century medicine, and is legitimately reunited in the study of immunology and endocrinology. A well tested, comprehensive, neuroanatomical map of emotional experience has not yet been found, although the limbic areas, cerebral cortex and brain stem appear to be implicated. Particular attention has been placed on the hypothalamus after W. B. Cannon and Bard demonstrated differences in emotional responses in animals whose brains were sectioned at various levels. In reviewing the history of theoretical approaches to emotion, it is revealed that there is a complicated series of peripheral, endocrine and subjective responses involved.
