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The temporal dynamic of emotional emergence

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Abstract

Following the neurophenomenological approach, we propose a model of emotional emergence that identifies the experimental structures of time (i.e., anticipation, crisis, and aftermath) involved in emotional experience and their plausible components in terms of cognition, physiology, and neuroscience. We argue that surprise, as a lived experience, and its physiological correlates of the startle reflex and cardiac defense are the core of the dynamic, and that the heart system sets temporally in motion the dynamic of emotional emergence. Finally, in reference to Craig’s model of emotion, we propose an integrative model of the temporal dynamic of emotional emergence that allows emotions to be distinguished depending on each temporal phase and that involves the following three systems: the brain (3rd person), the consciousness (1st person), and the doubled-sided (subjective/objective) continuum of the body-heart context, with the heart as the focus within the body during emotion. This model provides the framework for future developments in 1st- and 3rd-person approaches for an integrative understanding of the science of emotion, including the fields of psychophysiology and psychopathology.

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Notes

  1. In order to clearly distinguish the experimental method of the description of lived experiences from the philosophy of Phenomenology, we capitalize Phenomenology when referring to the philosophy but not when referring to the experimental method, according to previous suggestion (Depraz et al. 2003).

  2. By ‘emotional experience’ we understand a lived subjective experience with an emotional quality, leaving open the possibility for other lived subjective experiences to be non-emotional: perceptive-cognitive, imaginative, memory, linguistic, social, etc.

  3. Although Heidegger proposed a similar position in Being and Time (Heidegger 1973) of an affect-laden future-oriented lived time, we didn’t refer to his account for two reasons: 1) Heidegger’s existential level of analysis is overly macro-embedded in that it hardly allows for the possibility of a fine-grained subjective description that can be mapped onto the micro-physiological and neuro-dynamics of time, which is the goal of our discussion of neurophenomenology; and 2) Heidegger’s account is primarily one-sided with a negative valence (e.g., anguish and boredom), whereas our core interest for surprise is more encompassing of the valence of emotions, particularly the transversal of positive–negative polarization.

  4. A pre-conscious level refers to a level of consciousness that is neither reflexive not strictly unconscious given that it has the possibility to be brought into consciousness.

  5. Our main understanding of surprise is that it reflects the global temporal dynamic of emotional emergence but it has also other acceptations we consider as well, including surprise as 1) a startle reaction, as 2) the onset of the crisis after experience a strong emotional stimulus and as 3) the emergence of an occurrence linked to a rupture in the flowing of time.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMRS INSERM U930, Tours, France

    Thomas Desmidt, Maël Lemoine & Catherine Belzung

  2. Université François Rabelais de Tours, Tours, France

    Maël Lemoine & Catherine Belzung

  3. CHRU de Tours, Tours, France

    Thomas Desmidt

  4. Université de Rouen, Rouen, France

    Natalie Depraz

  5. UMR 8547, ENS-CNRS, Paris, France

    Natalie Depraz

  6. CHRU, 2 Bd Tonnellé, 37000, Tours, France

    Thomas Desmidt

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  1. Thomas Desmidt
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Correspondence to Thomas Desmidt.

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Desmidt, T., Lemoine, M., Belzung, C. et al. The temporal dynamic of emotional emergence. Phenom Cogn Sci 13, 557–578 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-014-9377-8

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