The Jamaican body's role in emotional experience and sense perception: Feelings, hearts, minds, and nerves

When Jamaicans speak offeelings, they literally mean feelings: physical sensations. Emotions, which emerge through social interaction, comprise an unmarked subset of feelings. They can affect themind in ways that are actualized in behavior. Emotions affect other parts of the body as well, in ways that follow from an equilibrium model of health. Non-emotional feelings index bodily disequilibrium rather than causing it. An example of such is seen innerves: a chronic feeling-complaint that comes about when the nerves, associated with perception and sensation, are weakened, and which entails visual dimness, jumpiness, and joint trouble. Although exacerbated by certain social situations, and often used in social commentary and manipulations, nerves is experienced and treated as a physical rather than a socially-based disorder. By studying the bodily dimension of nerves and other feelings we may gain insight into the ways in which the body serves as a source of culture (e.g., nerves culture) as well as into how culture influences bodily experience. We may broaden our understanding of the complex interplay between the bodily and mental dimensions of people's lives.     

Hearts and minds

The nonprofit Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology is closing, but the need for an independent and neutral body to facilitate dialog on US biotech policy has never been greater.     

Aligning brains and minds

In this issue of Neuron, Haxby and colleagues describe a new method for aligning functional brain activity patterns across participants. Their study demonstrates that objects are similarly represented across different brains, allowing for reliable classification of one person's brain activity based on another's.     

Thinking thoughts and reading minds

Review of Reaching into Thought: The Minds of the Great Apes, edited by Anne E. Russon, Kim A. Bard, Sue Taylor Parker. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996, xii + 464 pages, 64 figures, 23 tables, $84.95.     

Small brains, bright minds

Learning, memory, and social behavior are innate properties of the honeybee that are essential for the survival of each individual as well as for the survival of the hive. The small, accessible brain of the honeybee and the availability of the complete sequence of its genome make this social insect an ideal model for studying the connection between learning, memory, and social behavior.