The Emotional Brain provides a cutting-edge scientific background to such books as Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, showing that while cognitive studies have tended to ignore the emotions, we are increasingly understanding how crucial they are to our evolutionary survival, as shortcuts to cut through conscious reasoning when speed and rules-of-thumb are more important and effective than logic. Much of our emotional life is lived unconsciously, and is far richer than simply our conscious feelings - for example, our conscious mind will already be reacting to situations of danger some time before we begin to be afraid.

Not only does LeDoux present a fascinating insight into how our emotions function normally, but also provides a new understanding of emotional disorders.