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Brain Sciences
Special Issues
Defining Emotion: A Collection of Current Models
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Defining Emotion: A Collection of Current Models

A special issue of Brain Sciences (ISSN 2076-3425). This special issue belongs to the section "Cognitive, Social and Affective Neuroscience".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2025 | Viewed by 434

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Peter Walla

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Psychology, Sigmund Freud Private University, Freudplatz 1, 1020 Vienna, Austria
Interests: non-conscious affective; cognitive brain processes, memory, perception; self-referential processing, olfaction
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The existence of numerous definitions for the term "emotion" has the potential to engender a number of challenges, as well as confusion and misunderstandings. The absence of consensus among researchers regarding a unified definition of "emotion" can impede efforts to synthesize and compare findings across diverse studies, thereby hindering progress in our understanding of the human brain and its associated behaviors. Some understand an emotion as a subjective experience including internal feelings. In contrast, others perceive emotions as physiological (affective) responses, involving bodily changes, such as an increased heart rate or changes in facial expression. A third perspective suggests that emotions influence our actions and behaviors. Some researchers emphasize the cognitive aspects of emotions, while others strictly separate cognition from emotion. While all these phenomena undoubtedly occur and are interconnected, it is imperative that we delineate the term "emotion" more distinctly and clearly differentiate it from the terms "feeling" and "affective responses". In summary, the field of emotion research appears to be excessively complex, which is an issue that should be addressed, especially given the pervasive use of the term "emotion".

Prof. Dr. Peter Walla
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Brain Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • emotion
  • affect
  • affection
  • affective processing of feelings
  • mood
  • cognitive processing

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

52 pages, 1790 KiB  
Review
Emotion, Motivation, Reasoning, and How Their Brain Systems Are Related
by Edmund T. Rolls
Brain Sci. 2025, 15(5), 507; https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci15050507 - 16 May 2025
Viewed by 208
Abstract
A unified theory of emotion and motivation is updated in which motivational states are states in which instrumental goal-directed actions are performed to obtain anticipated rewards or avoid punishers, and emotional states are states that are elicited when the (conditioned or unconditioned) instrumental [...] Read more.
A unified theory of emotion and motivation is updated in which motivational states are states in which instrumental goal-directed actions are performed to obtain anticipated rewards or avoid punishers, and emotional states are states that are elicited when the (conditioned or unconditioned) instrumental reward or punisher is or is not received. This advances our understanding of emotion and motivation, for the same set of genes and associated brain systems can define the primary or unlearned rewards and punishers such as a sweet taste or pain, and the brain systems that learn to expect rewards or punishers and that therefore produce motivational and emotional states. It is argued that instrumental actions under the control of the goal are important for emotion, because they require an intervening emotional state in which an action is learned or performed to obtain the goal, that is, the reward, or to avoid the punisher. The primate including human orbitofrontal cortex computes the reward value, and the anterior cingulate cortex is involved in learning the action to obtain the goal. In contrast, when the instrumental response is overlearned and becomes a habit with stimulus–response associations, emotional states may be less involved. In another route to output, the human orbitofrontal cortex has effective connectivity to the inferior frontal gyrus regions involved in language and provides a route for declarative reports about subjective emotional states to be produced. Reasoning brain systems provide alternative strategies to obtain rewards or avoid punishers and can provide different goals for action compared to emotional systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Defining Emotion: A Collection of Current Models)
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