One common point of debate in the study of emotion is whether the basic,
irreducible elements of emotional life are discrete emotion categories, such as
anger, fear, sadness, and
so on, or dimensions such as approach and
avoidance. Resolving this debate will identify the basic
building blocks of emotional life that are the most appropriate targets of
scientific inquiry. In this paper, we briefly review meta-analytic work on the
neuroimaging of emotion and examine its potential for identifying “natural
kinds” of emotion in the brain. We outline criteria for identifying such natural
kinds, summarize the evidence to date on category and dimensional approaches,
and suggest ways in which neuroimaging studies could more directly address
fundamental questions about the nature of emotion.
