Emotions, Brain and Body

Since the work of James in the late 19th century, the predominant theoretical view of emotions is that they are combined brain-body states, or coordinated dynamic interactions, that prepare the body to act in situations of great significance to the individual. Despite over a century of research, however, we are still far from a comprehensive picture of the brain and body interactions that reliably discriminate between different emotions, their role in shaping our decisions and behaviour, and their impact on mental and physical health.

Recent advances in combining measures of peripheral physiology , CNS function and behaviour are advancing our understanding of such emotion systems. Yet we face significant conceptual and methodological challenges in integrating multimodal indicators of emotional brain and body functioning, which operate at different timescales and with different inherent lags.

This Symposium will bring together leading researchers in the central and peripheral aspects of emotional responses and experts probing the clinically-relevant links between brain and body, including the associations between chronic stress, anxiety and depression and cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and hormonal systems.

P r o f e s s o r H u g o C r i t c h l e y

Chair of Psychiatry and Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science

Brighton and Sussex Medical School, UK

P r o f e s s o r K a r i n R o e l o f s

Professor of Experimental Psychopathology

Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University Nijmegen, NL

P r o f e s s o r Q a s i m A z i z

Professor of Neurogastroenterology

The London School of Medicine and Dentistry at Queen Mary, University of London, UK

D r S a h i b K h a l s a

Director of Clinical Studies, Laureate Institute for Brain Research, Tulsa, USA

D r E r n o H e r m a n s