” Watson, the father of behaviorism, was also very critical of what he called the “introverted viewpoint” of James’ theory. He considered that there were only three types of unlearned emotional responses, which he called “fear,” “rage,” and “love” for convenience, although he wanted to “[...] strip them out of all their old connotations.”10 These three emotional responses can be elicited by three sets of specific stimuli. Thus, a sudden noise or loss of Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical physical support can induce an innate fear reaction, and restraint of bodily

movements triggers rage. He also mentioned the fact that these emotional responses can be conditioned and that, although these reactions are usually accompanied by specific behaviors, “[...] visceral and glandular factors predominate.” Papez’s (1937) theory of emotions also had a physiological basis. For him, connections between the Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical cerebral hemispheres and the hypothalamus, and between the cerebral

hemispheres and the dorsal thalamus mediate emotions. He held the view that emotion implies behavior (expression) and feeling (experience, subjective aspects). Expression Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical depends on the hypothalamus, and experience on the cortex. Although the “circuit of Papez” is still presented as “the emotional brain” in some handbooks, it is clear that many details of his original theory are now outdated. More recently, Schachter Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical (1975) emphasized the importance of cognitive processes: bodily states are interpreted in a cognitive context and are modulated by experience. He also showed that the visceral response appears to be a necessary, although not sufficient, condition for the occurrence of emotion. The view that there is a limited set of emotions (eg, fear, anger, etc) with specific neurophysiological Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and neuroanatomical substrates that can be considered as “basic” and serve as the primitive building blocks from which the other, more complex emotions are built, was challenged as late as 1990.11 However, Ekman has convincingly argued that there is now enough evidence of universals in expression and in physiology to suggest a biological

basis for these elementary emotions.12 Panksepp added to these arguments by stating that “learn more genetically dictated brain systems that mediate affective-emotional processes do exist, even though there are bound to be semantic ambiguities next in how we speak about these systems.”13 The biology of fear and anxiety Fear versus anxiety: is there a difference? The main function of fear and anxiety is to act as a signal of danger, threat, or motivational conflict, and to trigger appropriate adaptive responses. For some authors, fear and anxiety are undistinguishable, whereas others believe that they are distinct phenomena. Ethologists define fear as a motivational state aroused by specific stimuli that give rise to defensive behavior or escape.