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In-Depth Information
A Psychophysiological Approach Towards
Understanding Emotions
Kazutaka Ueda
Abstract Physicians, nurses, psychologists, and other medical professionals need
to understand patients' psychological issues, such as anxiety and depression, in
order to most effectively care for their patients. Particularly, those involved in the
treatment of certain psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety and mood disorders, in
which the chief symptoms are abnormal emotional states, should understand the
psychological and behavioral issues related to the patient's state of maladjustment.
In addition, an understanding of brain dysfunction and other physiological mech-
anisms, which cause these psychological maladies, is important for appropriately
assessing the patient's emotional well-being in order to regulate the patient's
emotional state and implement the most effective treatment strategy. This chapter
introduces the concept of Psychophysiology, a research approach that strives to
understand human emotion, cognition, and other psychological and behavioral
phenomena from a physiological perspective. The advent of functional neuroim-
aging technologies beginning with positron emission tomography (PET) in the
1980s and the subsequent development of functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) in the 1990s brought new methods to this
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field of psychological research.
When coupled with advancements in neuroscience, the psychophysiological
approach exhibits even greater potential. This topic strives to further the under-
standing of the mechanisms underlying emotion and presents potential strategies for
the development of better methods to regulate emotion. In doing so, this chapter
will discuss how the psychophysiological approach is valuable for elucidating the
pathology of mental disorders, therapeutic mechanisms, and other key concepts in
psychiatry. This discussion will further emphasize the important association of
psychophysiology with neuroscienti
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c approaches.
K. Ueda (
&
)
Design Innovation Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo,
Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan
e-mail: ueda@design-i.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
