Brains generate a body of feeling

Emotions ranging from the thrill of victory to the agony of defeat—this is an Olympic year, after all—engage structures throughout the brain that keep tabs on the body’s current status, such as a racing heartbeat, flushed cheeks, and churning guts. That, at least, is the implication of a study in the October Nature Neuroscience.

Each basic emotion activates a unique brain network that extends far beyond the limbic system, the inner-brain areas that researchers have often viewed as the seat of emotion, contends a team of neuroscientists led by Antonio R.