Physiologic measures of emotion.

Abstract

This article has focused on a brief review of major psychophysiologic response measures in emotions research, and has attempted to acquaint the reader with basic findings and interpretive issues in this vast and rapidly growing research area. It seems clear that measures of autonomic, somatic motor, and central nervous system activity in emotion provide one perspective on a complex biopsychosocial domain. We have moved from believing that physiologic arousal is sufficient for emotional experience to believing in multiple response systems that interact in complex ways to produce emotional experiences and expressions. The past decade has seen significant advances in our understanding of what is indexed by such responses, and it is now evident that important aspects of the underlying cognitive structure of emotions is revealed through multiple physiologic response channels. Thus, an exciting new era in the psychophysiology of emotions has begun. What will the next decade bring? I believe that the major advances in the next 10 years will emerge through an emerging cognitive neuroscience of emotions that weds traditional psychophysiology, neuroscience, neuroimaging, and neuropsychology through the development of cross-platform technologies. For example, combined psychophysiologic and functional imaging investigations will shed new light on the neural generators for specific response channels. Standardized, parametrically defined emotional stimuli will gain widespread use and will speed progress through experimentation in multiple laboratories. Well-designed and theoretically driven psychophysiologic investigations of emotional responding will continue to play a central role in many of these advances, as they have in the last 50 years of emotion research.