Neuroscience methods have gained widespread use in many areas of psychological and behavioral sciences. Their use has likewise increased in research and theory on motivation and emotion. As a consequence of this explosion of interest, we organized this special issue. In organizing this issue, we thought it important to have contributions from a range of neuroscience methods, because addressing issues concerning motivation and emotion requires multiple methods, each with their own benefits and limitations, particularly when used in studying emotive processes in humans. In addition, we invited scientists to contribute who are making programmatic neuroscientific contributions to the study of motivation and emotion, and were pleased that all invited agreed to contribute. The study of physiological and biological processes in motivation and emotion dates back several decades in nonhuman animal research and human research. Indeed, scientists studying motivation and emotion were some of the first to employ physiological measurements in their work. Consider Walter Cannon’s (1915) classic experiments on the fight or flight response, and Albert Ax’s (1953) classic experiment elucidating physiological differences between anger and fear. However, different names of the field(s) employing these methods and models have been used over time. The field has been referred to as biological psychology, psychobiology, physiological psychology, neuropsychology, psychophysiology, as well as other names. Although some of these terms are still used to describe specific types of conceptual and/or methodological approaches, in our view, these fields are all associated with neuroscience, the term most commonly used today in describing research into physiological and biological processes involving brain/mind. The explosion of interest in neuroscience within the study of motivation, emotion, and other psychological processes is likely due to several factors. One prominent factor contributed to the explosion of interest is the advent of new and more readily available methods. For example, the signal of most interest in functional magnetic resonance imaging, the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal, was first successfully measured in the human brain in the early 1990s (Kwong et al. 1992), and it has since gained widespread research usage. Also, within the last decade, several companies produced easy-to-use acquisition and signal processing systems for use with physiological responses such as electroencephalography (EEG), event-related brain potentials (ERPs), and electromyography. At the same time, the growing interest in the neuroscience of human motivation and emotion coincided with the advent of salivary measurement and methods for acute single administrations of the hormones oxytocin and testosterone, and in research these hormones subsequently proved to be critical motivators for numerous human social and affective behaviors (Bos et al. in press). Emotive neuroscience integrates diverse literatures, theories, and methodologies to address questions about brain, mind, and behavior and thus creates a science E. Harmon-Jones (&) University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: eddiehj@gmail.com