Is it Possible to Recognize Emotions/Feelings?

Abstract

It is true that emotions are the most important psychological functions in humans and are on the top of the hierarchical tree of the homeostasis. As a potent mental activity, emotions significantly influence various aspects of human functioning such as decision-making, perception, attention and memory. For scientific but also for practical reasons, the main question is: how to register and measure emotions? The aim of this article is to summarize the main known methods for measuring the emotions/feelings published in Medline basis. Different methodologies are presented in order to measure emotions such as: Face recognition, Bodily maps of emotions, Evaluation of autonomic nervous system activity, EEG, and especially fMRI and PET scan. Data are used from PubMed bases.