Why do Dostoevskian bodies throb, sob, and grimace in ways that seem so far from the civilized protocols of, for example, Henry James' exhibitions of emotions? How precisely does the concept of unconscious motivation serve interpretation when complicated by neuroscientific ideas of ''the body as ground reference,'' of ''the neural self'' as a ''repeatedly reconstructed biological state'' that records memories. This essay explores the implications of affective neuroscience research (Panksepp, Damasio, Solms) for interpreting Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, particularly those scenes in which the characters access memories and display physical symptoms which appear subcortical.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.