#11 Dr. Joseph Le Doux FEAR, EMOTIONS AND THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

In episode #11 we explore the way emotions work, and particularly fear - the way it’s triggered, what happens in the brain and how much we are conscious of what’s going on. I think this is really relevant as we appear to be an extremely fearful, defensive and argumentative society in general, and perhaps if we understood what was happening inside us we might be able to limit some of the damage these kind of encounters produce. We also look at the the Limbic System and Triune Brain theories of emotions and the evolution of the brain, and find out why these hugely popular theories in Psychology are no longer really considered true by neuroscientists. Perhaps we can salvage something useful from these theories for psychology, as some really effective therapies have been based on them in the past. So who better to help us clarify all this than emotion and fear specialist, neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux. Dr Le Doux is the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at NYU in New York in the Center for Neura