Emotion and Decision-making Explained

Professor Edmund T. Rolls performs full-time research at the Oxford Centre for Computational Neuroscience, and at the University of Warwick, and has acted as Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, and as Fellow and Tutor of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. His research links neurophysiological and computational neuroscience approaches to human functional neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies in order to provide a fundamental basis for understanding human brain function and its disorders.

• 1. Introduction: The Issues ; 2. The Nature of Emotion ; 3. The Functions of Emotion: Reward, punishment, and emotion in brain design ; 4. The Brain Mechanisms Underlying Emotion ; 5. Food Reward Value, Pleasure, Hunger, and Appetite ; 6. Pharmacology of Emotion, Reward, and Addiction: The basal ganglia ; 7. Sexual Behaviour, Reward, and Brain Function: Sexual selection of behaviour ; 8. Decision-Making Mechanisms ; 9. Neuroeconomics and Decision-Making ; 10. Emotional Feelings and Consciousness: A theory of consciousness ; 11. Conclusions and Broader Issues ; A. Neural Networks and Emotion-Related Learning ; B. Decision-Making Models ; C. Glossary ; D. Colour Plates

One would struggle to find another single volume that covered so much of relevance in this field with writing so clear and tutorial, doubtless honed by several generations of teaching undergraduates at Oxford University.