ABSTRACT
The brain can be roughly divided into instinctive, emotional, and rational layers (MacLean, The Triune Brain in Evolution). Recent results distinguish instinct from emotion by showing that the amygdala, a key emotional region of the brain, is subject to attentional control (Pessoa, The Cognitive-Emotional Brain).
While excessive emotion can impede decision-making, clinical studies show that decision-making is ineffective without emotional engagement (Damasio, Descartes’ Error), because decisions depend on connections between the frontal lobes and amygdala. Neuroscience has found many other connections in the brain between cognition and emotion. For example, the neurotransmitter dopamine is involved in learning cognitive associations based on rewards. Also, both human and monkey brains possess mirror neurons that become active when one is doing something or watching someone else do the same thing. Empathy has both emotional and cognitive aspects, and mirror neurons could be involved in both.
All these results suggest that emotion and cognition are both basic functions of the brain and depend a great deal on one another. This implies that our brains function best in social environments that encourage both thinking and feeling.
