page_title: Cannon–Bard theory
section_title: Additional theories of emotion
hierarchical_section_title: Cannon–Bard theory / Additional theories of emotion
context_page_description: The main concepts of the Cannon–Bard theory are that emotional expression results from the function of hypothalamic structures, and emotional feeling results from stimulations of the dorsal thalamus. The physiological changes and subjective feeling of an emotion in response to a stimulus are separate and independent; arousal does not have to occur before the emotion. Thus, the thalamic region is attributed a major role in this theory of emotion. The theory is therefore also referred to as the thalamic theory of emotion.
context_section_description: The Cannon–Bard theory of emotion was formulated as a challenge and alternative to James–Lange theory. The Papez-Maclean theory is another influential theory of emotion that differs from the Cannon–Bard theory in terms of the area that is considered to be responsible for emotion expression.  James Papez initially suggested that the interconnections among structures of the limbic system were ideally constituted to handle the long-lasting, intense aspects of experience that are typically associated with emotion.
  The circuit originally proposed by Papez consisted of the hippocampus, the ipsilateral mammillary body, the anterior nucleus of the thalamus, the cingulate cortex, the parahippocampal gyrus, and the entorhinal cortex, returning to the hippocampus. MacLean elaborated on Papez's earlier work, adding the prefrontal cortex, the septum, and the amygdala, and named this group of structures the limbic system.
  There is also the two-factor theory of emotion, as proposed by Stanley Schachter and Jerome E. Singer.
caption: The location of the limbic system, the key brain area in the Papez-MacLean theory of emotion.
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