The book's subtitle and its author's being a theoretical physicist made me think that the topic could be consciousness from a new and interesting angle. But it's actually about affective neuroscience -- the science of emotions. Starting from the basic notion of core affect, it takes a very expansive view of emotions -- perhaps scores or hundreds of them. There are prominent chapters on wanting versus liking and determination versus apathy. And questionnaires for emotional profiling. Mlodinow says that without emotion, we'd be lost, unable to act or make decisions.

The learning curve to understand how humans work has gone parabolic. In the just the past few years, scientists have finally discovered there are brain systems that manage pleasure, that are separate from systems that manage desire. There is an actual cacophony going on in our bodies, 24 hours a day, as everything communicates in its own channel, to its own audience, and acts accordingly. They are discovering the locations of things like anxiety, happiness, disgust, guilt and shame. Mostly they are discovering that none of these things works in isolation. They only work in concert, in consultation, in combination. Leonard Mlodinow explores some of these discoveries using his delightful and addictive storytelling style in his latest book Emotional.

Personally, the most compelling finding is that last one, that nothing works by itself alone. Isolating and triggering a trait gives you nothing but a dysfunctional person. You can’t have the full effect of any function without the input and effects of several others. This is part of the reason why brain functions have been so difficult to nail down, and why nailing them down has produced so little for science.

We have been vainly searching for the controller, the seat of the mind and a soul, continuously ignoring the evidence that results. There is no controller. We are interacting systems. Every system plays its part and the result is a person, a personality, a mind. There is a command network, but it works with numerous other networks to collectively present who we are to the world, and to ourselves. Emotions color those factors, and are colored by them. Everything is a two way street.

The degree of determination or drive makes a difference. It is filtered and affected by other control systems. The sunny or cloudy outlook makes a difference. Bad experiences do too. The matrix nature of us makes it hard to put everything in its own place, much less make it predictable or changeable. But then, we’re not meant to do that. We are instead complex beings, the products of an infinite number of factors, permutations and combinations. That’s precisely what makes humans different from other beings. We have a “core affect” that is the net of all these inputs.

In a series of dazzling stories, Mlodinow traces discoveries, both on purpose and accidental, and what impact they have had on our understanding of ourselves. In this book, he employs himself and his family. His parents, both Holocaust survivors, were two completely different people, whose scarring led to totally different personalities for them. His siblings and children fit into some of the stories, and of course Mlodinow himself is hyper sensitive to his own actions, attitudes and thought processes, which factor into several of the tales, if only because he was writing this book. It makes for a fast paced and varied read, far more autobiographical than readers have come to expect of him.

During the course of the book, Mlodinow’s mother, who starts out in her 90s, is profiled as a young mother with her own unique take on the world and raising her children. She ages as the book progresses, ending up in a nursing home where he cannot visit her because of Covid-19. She isn’t the backbone of the book, but her personality is relevant at several points, causing emotional reactions in Mlodinow as she declines.

The brain/body connection is more central here. Who we are affects our bodies in ways that often affect others and how they perceive and experience us. There are even several personality tests towards the end, that might or might not help readers see how others see them. Mlodinow says there are no right or wrong answers, just potential insights.

A lot is quite recent: “It wasn’t until 2015 that, fueled by recent advances in genetics, scientists began to uncover the true roots of such illnesses (like bipolar and schizophrenia). Much more work needs to be done, but we now know that they arise in patients having fewer genes involved in signaling between neurons and more genes related to neuro-inflammatory cells, which leads to low-level but chronic brain inflammation. An excess of dopamine production, related to the reward system, also seems to play a role but in a more complex and subtle manner.” We are beginning to see what makes people different, and why, from a physiological standpoint.

One of the non-emotions common in humans is the need to categorize. Everything must fit in a bucket somewhere. So emotions are classified as positive or negative: “The sum of all the research on positive emotion is that people who have plenty of positive emotion in their lives tend to be healthier and more creative and to get along well with others. Positive emotion makes us more resilient, strengthening the emotional resources needed for coping, and broadens our awareness, allowing us to see more options when faced with a problem.” (Maybe so, but it reads like a horoscope.)

And negative emotions serve to keep people on their toes. He gives the example of financial traders who must make split second decisions that could make or lose hundreds of millions of dollars – all day long. Being affable is not an asset here. Those with more negative outlooks and attitudes are more successful in trading. The bottom line is there is no “correct” way to be a human.

Scientists have discovered, quite by accident at first, that motivation is not the same as desire or pleasure. Rats can be seen not to eat their favorite foods unless motivation is triggered as well as desire, and not enjoy their favorite foods but eat them just to stay alive if the pleasure function is missing. This is more evidence of multiple systems interacting to produce a functioning being.

So with humans. Various faults and failings in the interconnected networks can make some seem unemotional, lacking the key functions of self-preservation, or empathy. Their very presence can be offputting to fully functioning people and therefore make it difficult for them to have fully operational relationships. All this is fine insight scientists are only now assembling.

For all that, I fought the book as I read it. A book called Emotional, at least to me, should be or at least contain, stories of outbursts, dysfunction, gaining self-control, learning to accept others, self-editing, manipulation and life-changing adjustments. Self control and self awareness are key factors when examining emotions, I would have thought. It should examine gender differences and the leveraging of emotions in manipulative fashions. What does too little mean? What about too much? The book actually contains none of this: nothing about what most readers would consider emotions. It is only and all about this broader span of functions that most people would not consider emotions eg. guilt, shame, determination, motivation and disgust:

“Hunger (a Primordial emotion) is an emotion that helps us decide whether to eat something available (walk away from free food) rather than just employ a series of rules.” He says there are five states distinguishing emotions from reflexes, but readers will find that doesn’t bridge the gap.

He says some emotions are “social emotions” like guilt, shame, jealousy, indignation, gratitude, admiration, empathy and pride. As I read, I kept thinking – that’s not an emotion! It’s a mood, or a state, a reflex, a trigger or a reaction – but not an emotion as I know them. It’s not a good way to read a fine book. It really needs some explaining right up front. Or a better title. Maybe Expanding Emotions.

It concludes with three ways to gain control of emotions: acceptance, appraisal and expression. We’re probably most familiar with the last one, where talking it out or writing it down defuses the emotion, such as anger or hurt. So it’s not just a physiology book. It is very much an affective psychology journey as well.

Mlodinow takes great pains to describe it all and make it understandable with his always-appropriate stories. But I have a two sentence shortcut for regaining control over emotions. It’s old but still quite trustworthy: Don’t sweat the small stuff. And: It’s all small stuff. That’s a key life lesson that should be front and center. Just by itself, it explains most of what you need to know about emotions.

David Wineberg ( )