Dissertation
Semantic and neural representations of emotion concepts
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Drexel University
Sep 2024
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00010766
Abstract
Along with the ability to experience and perceive emotion in others, humans also have some long-term representation of knowledge about emotions such as anger, sadness, and fear. Within the field of semantic memory, there remain significant open questions about how long-term knowledge more broadly is represented. One prominent point of contention is whether sensorimotor modalities are critical for accessing and understanding conceptual knowledge. Within the affective sciences, an influential class of theories have been proposed to account for available evidence about how the brain constructs the experience of an emotional state. Importantly, these constructionist models emphasize the role of conceptual knowledge and the sensory modality of interoception in this process. Leveraging the predictions made by these models, the four studies presented in this dissertation describe the structure and organization of conceptual knowledge for emotions and test how interoception contributes to the access and understanding of these concepts, their organization in long-term memory, and their neural representations. The results contribute to our understanding of the role of interoceptive processing in shaping the conceptual space of emotions, as well as modality-specificity and grounding of conceptual knowledge more broadly.
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Details
- Title
- Semantic and neural representations of emotion concepts
- Creators
- Alexandra E. Kelly
- Contributors
- Evangelia G. Chrysikou (Advisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- i, 111 pages
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences (Psychology); College of Arts and Sciences; Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 991021930613504721