Neurobiology and its Applications to Psychotherapy – II

The neuroscience of emotion, intuition and decision-making

The relationship between psychotherapy and neuroscience – long rather static while the two fields appeared to have different interests and methods – is rapidly changing. This change has been primarily because topics that have long been of interest to the psychotherapeutic community, most especially emotion, have now become viable matters for mainstream neuroscientific investigation. While emotion has often been regarded as a negative force for human decision-making, there are times when emotion is essential in order for human beings to make sensible choices. The basis for the phenomenon appears to be the hunches that we often generate about complex problems, typically described as intuition – a source of knowledge has a vital role to play in creativity and imagination. These talks will review scientific investigations on these borderlands between psychoanalyzis and neuroscience, particularly in the domains of emotion, intuition, and the role of both in delusional beliefs.