Her quest is to understand emotion

Psychologists have long believed that emotions are hard-wired into the human brain. ``The general assumption is that when faced with, say, a bear or a difficult social situation, a circuit gets triggered and you feel an emotion," says professor Lisa Feldman Barrett of the department of psychology at Boston College. This seems eminently logical: Evolution has structured our brains so that when we meet an unexpected bear, it triggers a fear circuit in our minds, which triggers a flight response. What could be more obvious?

``It turns out that's not true," says Barrett, whose theories about the science of emotion have spurred academic controversy. Barrett, 42, is a lively speaker with a deft eloquence and a touch of a Canadian accent.

She thinks that the brain is built only to feel ``pleasure" or ``displeasure," which she calls affect. Barrett believes the emotions that we call fear, or anger, or surprise, are in fact generated when we categorize our feelings in ways that are learned.

But if emotions aren't part of our innate circuitry, what are they? Barrett makes an analogy with how we see color.

``Looking at a color, your eye takes in information on light. What registers is a certain wavelength. But you don't say it's light at 600 nm. You say it's red." And, of course, there are different shades. One person's red may be another's vermilion. Different people may see the same color but think about it in a different way. ``Language has an enormous impact on how you feel. You have to know something about `red' in order to experience it, and there's a great deal of variability between cultures in concepts of color."

The same happens with emotion, she says. ``If you don't have a concept of anger, you won't feel it."

The practical effect of this? ``You don't yell because you're angry. Affect isn't controllable, but whether you fashion that affect into anger is malleable." In other words, if we're aware our emotions are learned behavior, hopefully, we can more easily step back from those emotions and control them.

Barrett says that her theory is bound to encounter resistance from the public because it's counter-intuitive. But, of course, until science proved it otherwise, it seemed obvious that the sun revolved around the earth.

The problem is, in many ways, one of definition. What do we even mean by our words for emotion? It means different concepts to linguists, or neurobiologists, or anthropologists. ``All cultures have a category for `happy,' " for example, says Barrett. ``But there's a lot of variability in their meaning of `anger.' Of course, all cultures have a category for witches, and faeries, and magical creatures, too. They're man-made."

The idea that the brain doesn't have specific locations for emotions has raised hackles. Barrett describes angry colleagues yelling at her, proving that, even if emotions may be constructed, that makes them no less potent. Gerald Clore, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, says: ``I think she has an important new view that will definitely be controversial but is, I think, perhaps correct in its essential components. It suggests that the process of emotion draws on many regions of the brain."

Barrett isn't afraid of causing a stir. Her theory is leading her to explore sensory processing, the role of language in emotion perception, and sex differences in emotion. ``You stand on the shoulders of giants," she says. ``But that doesn't mean you can't criticize them."

FACT SHEET

Hometown: Newton, by way of Toronto.

Family: Husband Daniel, a software architect. Daughter Sophia, 7.

Evidence: Despite a century of looking, ``science has not discovered a consistent way to measure a person's face, body or brain, and determine if they are angry or, say, afraid," according to Barrett. Perhaps that means our measurements haven't been good enough. Or, perhaps, she says, ``we will never find them, because they are not there."

Ambitions: ``I would like to be part of a paradigm shift in the field." Meaning she wants to start a revolution. ``The study of the science of emotion could keep going without any real accumulation of knowledge. I want that to change."

Snipe: ``Someone should do a reality show on academia. There's all this drama and intrigue!"

Hobbies: Cooking French and Italian cuisine, cross-stitching, and stenciling. She recently began to take painting lessons. ``I love the Dutch masters. I want to learn to paint in the realist fashion."

Currently reading: Michael Pollan's ``The Omnivore's Dilemma." ``I'm deeply embroiled in figuring out how to eat in a moral way. I think of purchasing anything as a moral act."