Piecing together the puzzle of emotional consciousness

The paper presents a balanced overview of cognitive and precognitive approaches to emotional consciousness, examining how different theories explain the experiential quality of feeling an emotion. It reviews the evidence supporting these theories, noting methodological challenges unique to studying emotional consciousness and what can be learned from research on perceptual consciousness. The authors identify three key experimental contrasts necessary for investigating neural correlates of emotional consciousness, each with its own limitations. They conclude by highlighting promising avenues that may help overcome current impasses and advance collaborative understanding of emotional consciousness.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract The search for neural correlates of emotional consciousness has gained momentum in the last decades. Nonetheless, disagreements concerning the mechanisms that determine the experiential qualities of emotional consciousness—the “what is it like” to feel an emotion—as well as on their neural correlates have far-reaching consequences on how researchers study and measure emotion, sometimes leading to seemingly irresolvable impasses. The current paper lays out in a balanced way the viewpoint of both cognitive and precognitive approaches to emotional consciousness on the basis of commonalities and differences between the claims of some relevant theories of emotions. We examine the sufficiency of the existing evidence in support of the proposed theories of emotional consciousness by going through the methodological specificity of the study of emotional consciousness and its unique challenges and highlighting what can and cannot be imported by advances in research on perceptual consciousness. We propose that there are three key experimental contrasts that are each equally necessary in the search for the neural correlates of emotional consciousness and each contrast alone coming with its own limitations. We conclude by acknowledging some of the most promising avenues in the field, which may help go beyond the current limitations and collaboratively piece together the puzzle of emotional consciousness.