What is Basic about Basic Emotions? Lasting Lessons from Affective Neuroscience

A cross-species affective neuroscience strategy for understanding the primary-process (basic) emotions is defended. The need for analyzing the brain and mind in terms of evolutionary stratification of functions into at least primary (instinctual), secondary (learned), and tertiary (thought-related) processes is advanced. When viewed in this context, the contentious battles between basic-emotion theorists and dimensional-constructivist approaches can be seen to be largely nonsubstantial differences among investigators working at different levels of analysis. Keywords affective neuroscience, brain, emotions, evolution, primary processes In addressing the following questions posed by Jim Russell, we found the first to be rather ambiguous from our neuroscience perspective. Our italicized insertions clarify how we approach such issues. Question 1: How does a basic emotion evolutionarily built-in/“primary-process ” emotions, in our preferred terms, which we will describe at the outset differ from simply a discrete