Joseph E. Ledoux Quotes

#1. Fear and other emotions are based on assumptions, presuppositions, and expectations; they are constructed in the brain from nonemotional ingredients.

Joseph E. Ledoux

#2. Everything we think and feel (and keep thinking and feeling) creates, deep within, the brain we have.

Joseph E. Ledoux

#3. Once a genetic component has been established, the search for the genes involved can begin. This is a time-consuming and complex process that has recently been greatly facilitated by the information obtained by the Human Genome Project.51

Joseph E. Ledoux

#4. For example, one promising target is the peptide oxytocin, which has been reported to reduce anxiety, promote affiliation, attachment, and affection,33 and facilitate extinction of threat conditioning.

Joseph E. Ledoux

#5. twin studies of anxiety have revealed that genetic factors account for roughly 30 percent to 50 percent of an individual's tendency to be generally anxious or to have a specific anxiety disorder.50

Joseph E. Ledoux

#6. Acceptance and commitment therapy, a variant on cognitive therapy, attempts to teach people to accept rather than change their emotions and make decisions within the context of what they value, as opposed to letting negative feelings control their behavior.

Joseph E. Ledoux

#7. Unfortunately, one of the most signifi cant things ever said about emotion may be that everyone knows what it is until they are asked to define it.

Joseph E. Ledoux

#8. Heritability in psychiatric disorders typically involves complex inheritance patterns controlled by multiple genes that interact with environmental factors to produce their results.

Joseph E. Ledoux

#9. Anxiety, in short, is a conscious feeling. It can arise in a bottom-up way, driven by activity in defensive circuits or from higher processes that conceptualize worry, either about an uncertain future or about existence itself.

Joseph E. Ledoux

#10. Emotions are a critical source of information for learning.

Joseph E. Ledoux