Joseph E. LeDoux
Joseph E. LeDoux (born December 7, 1949) is an American neuroscientist whose research is primarily focused on survival circuits, including their impacts on emotions such as fear and anxiety.[1] LeDoux is the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at New York University, and director of the Emotional Brain Institute, a collaboration between NYU and New York State with research sites at NYU and the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in Orangeburg, New York. He is also the lead singer and songwriter in the band The Amygdaloids.
Early life and education
This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources. (April 2020) |
Joseph LeDoux was born on December 7, 1949, in the Cajun Prairie town of
Academic and professional history
This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources. (April 2020) |
In the fall of 1974 LeDoux began a PhD program at the
Personal life
This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources. (April 2020) |
In 1971 LeDoux married LSU classmate Diana Steen. They divorced amicably in 1978. Since 1982 he has been married to art critic Nancy Princenthal. They reside in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn. They have two children, Jacob S. LeDoux (died 2005) and Milo E. LeDoux. Milo is a graduate of the University of Oxford, where he studied classics, and is pursuing a career in law.
In 2004, LeDoux and NYU Biology Professor Tyler Volk began performing as a cover band for small parties around NYU, and in 2006 they formed The Amygdaloids. The original band also included Daniela Schiller, (then an NYU postdoctoral fellow), and graduate student Nina Curley. The band's lyrics, mostly written by LeDoux, are based on neuroscientific, psychological, and philosophical themes, and offer scholarly insights into the role of mind and brain in daily life. Their inaugural CD, Heavy Mental, was released in 2007. On their second CD, Theory of My Mind, LeDoux and Grammy winner Rosanne Cash sing "Crime of Passion" and "Mind over Matter", both written by LeDoux. In 2012, the band released All in Our Minds, an EP in which all songs had "mind" in their title. Anxious, a companion to LeDoux's book with the same title, was released in 2015 and explores some of the same scientific themes as the book, but through song. The band's unique focus on original songs about mind and brain has landed them considerable press. They play regularly in New York City, and have also performed in Washington DC, San Antonio TX, Indianapolis IN, Lafayette LA, and Montreal. LeDoux and Amygdaloids' bassist Colin Dempsey perform as an acoustic duo called So We Are.
Research and theories
Work on threat response, anxiety, and emotions
As explained in his 1996 book, The Emotional Brain,
LeDoux's work on amygdala processing of threats has helped understand exaggerated responses to threats in anxiety disorders in humans.
Difference between threat response and emotions
In 2012 LeDoux emphasized the value, when discussing brain functions in animals, of using terms that are not derived from human subjective experience.[14] The common practice of calling brain circuits that detect and respond to threats "fear circuits" implies that these circuits are responsible for feelings of fear. LeDoux has argued that so-called Pavlovian fear conditioning should be renamed Pavlovian threat conditioning to avoid the implication that "fear" is being acquired in rats or humans.[15]
In 2015 he emphasised the notion of survival functions mediated by survival circuits, the purpose of which is to keep organisms alive (rather than to make emotions). For example, defensive survival circuits exist to detect and respond to threats, and can be present in all organisms. However, only organisms that can be conscious of their own brain's activities can feel fear. Fear is a conscious experience and occurs the same way as any other kind of conscious experience: via cortical circuits that allow attention to certain forms of brain activity. He argues the only differences between an emotional and non-emotion state of consciousness are the underlying neural ingredients that contribute to the state.[16] These ideas and their implications for understanding the neural foundations of pathological fear and anxiety are explained in his 2015 book, Anxious.[17] In this he says "Fear and anxiety are not biologically wired... They are the consequence of the cognitive processing of nonemotional ingredients."[18]
In 2018 he wrote that the amygdala may release hormones due to a trigger (such as an innate reaction to seeing a snake), but "then we elaborate it through cognitive and conscious processes". He differentiated between the defence system, which has evolved over time, and emotions such as fear and anxiety. He points out that even simple organisms such as bacteria move in response to threats; "It's in the brain to allow an organism, whether it be a bacterium or a human, to detect and respond to danger. ... It's not in the brain to create feelings like fear and anxiety."[19] Lisa Feldman Barrett takes a similar view.[20]
Awards and professional recognition
LeDoux has received a number of awards, including the Karl Spencer Lashley Award from the American Philosophical Society, the Fyssen International Prize in Cognitive Science, Jean Louis Signoret Prize of the IPSEN Foundation, the Santiago Grisolia Prize, the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, and the American Psychological Association Donald O. Hebb Award.[citation needed] He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a William James Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.[citation needed]
Books and other public outreach
In addition to numerous publications in scholarly journals, LeDoux has written:
- The Integrated Mind (with Michael Gazzaniga, Plenum, 1978)
- The Emotional Brain (Simon and Schuster, 1998)
- Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are (Viking, 2002)
- Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (Viking, 2015)
- The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains (Viking, 2019)
- The Four Realms of Existence: A New Theory of Being Human (Belknap 2023)[21]
He has edited several volumes, including Mind and Brain: Dialogues in Cognitive Neuroscience (with William Hirst, Cambridge University Press, 1986), The Self: From Soul to Brain (with Jacek Debiec and Henry Moss, Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 2003), and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Basic Science and Clinical Practice (with Peter Shiromani and Terrence Keane, Humana Press, 2009).
He has contributed to
References
- ^ "I'm not studying emotion. I'm studying the function of survival circuits. Survival circuits contribute to emotions but are not emotion circuits." LeDoux as quoted in: Emory, Margaret (June 6, 2018). "On Fear, Emotions, and Memory: An Interview with Dr. Joseph LeDoux". brainworldmagazine.com. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
- ^ a b LeDoux JE (1996) The Emotional Brain. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- ^ Gazzaniga MS, LeDoux JE (1978) The Integrated Mind. New York: Plenum.
- ^ LeDoux JE (1994) Emotion, memory and the brain. Sci Am 270:50-57.
- ^ a b LeDoux JE (2002) Synaptic Self: How our brains become who we are. New York: Viking; LeDoux JE (2000) Emotion circuits in the brain. Annu Rev Neurosci 23:155-184; Rodrigues SM, Schafe GE, LeDoux JE (2004) Molecular mechanisms underlying emotional learning and memory in the lateral amygdala. Neuron 44:75-91; Johansen JP, Cain CK, Ostroff LE, LeDoux JE (2011) Molecular mechanisms of fear learning and memory. Cell 147:509-524.
- S2CID 4821044.
- ^ New York: Viking; LeDoux JE (2015) Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety. New York: Viking.
- ^ Morgan MA, Romanski LM, LeDoux JE (1993) Extinction of emotional learning: contribution of medial prefrontal cortex. Neurosci Lett 163:109-113; Morgan MA, LeDoux JE (1995) Differential contribution of dorsal and ventral medial prefrontal cortex to the acquisition and extinction of conditioned fear in rats. Behav Neurosci 109:681-688; Sotres-Bayon F, Bush DE, LeDoux JE (2004) Emotional perseveration: an update on prefrontal-amygdala interactions in fear extinction. Learn Mem 11:525-535.
- ^ LeDoux JE (2002) Synaptic Self: How our brains become who we are. New York: Viking; LeDoux JE (2015) Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety. New York: Viking; Shin, L.M., S.L. Rauch, R.K. Pitman. "Amygdala, Medial Prefrontal Cortex, and Hippocampal Function in PTSD." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2006) 1071:67–79; Mathew, S.J., R.B. Price, and D.S. Charney. "Recent Advances in the Neurobiology of Anxiety Disorders: Implications for Novel Therapeutics." American Journal of Medical Genetics Part C, Seminars in Medical Genetics (2008) 148C:89–98.
- ^ Nader K, Schafe GE, LeDoux JE (2000) Fear memories require protein synthesis in the amygdala for reconsolidation after retrieval. Nature 406:722-726
- S2CID 18182429.
- ^ Monfils MH, Cowansage KK, Klann E, LeDoux JE (2009) Extinction-reconsolidation boundaries: key to persistent attenuation of fear memories. Science 324:951-955; Schiller D, Monfils MH, Raio CM, Johnson DC, LeDoux JE, Phelps EA (2010) Preventing the return of fear in humans using reconsolidation update mechanisms. Nature 463:49-53; Schiller D, Kanen JW, LeDoux JE, Monfils MM, and Phelps EA (2013) Extinction during reconsolidation of threat memory diminishes prefrontal cortex involvement. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 110:20040-20045.
- ^ Xue YX, Luo YX, Wu P, Shi HS, Xue LF, Chen C, Zhu WL, Ding ZB, Bao YP, Shi J, Epstein DH, Shaham Y, Lu L (2012) A memory retrieval-extinction procedure to prevent drug craving and relapse. Science 336:241-245.
- ^ LeDoux J (2012) Rethinking the emotional brain. Neuron 73:653-676.
- ^ LeDoux JE (2014) Coming to terms with fear. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 111:2871-2878.
- ^ LeDoux JE (2015) Feelings: What are they and how does the brain make them? Daedalus 144.
- ^ LeDoux JE (2015) Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety. New York: Viking.
- ^ ANxiety, 2015, Chapter 9, p232
- ^ "On Fear, Emotions, and Memory: An Interview with Dr. Joseph LeDoux » Page 2 of 2 » Brain World". 2018-06-07.
- ^ Neuroscience, Dean Mobbs,Ralph Adolphs,Michael S. Fanselow,Lisa Feldman Barrett,Joseph E. LeDoux,Kerry Ressler,Kay M. Tye,Nature. "On the Nature of Fear". Scientific American. Retrieved 2022-06-09.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Harvard University Press. "The Four Realms of Existence: A New Theory of Being Human".
- ^ "LeDoux Lab: News/Events/Press". www.cns.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2020-04-05.