Are emotions experienced in the heart or the brain?

Short answer

The 'experience' of things refers to our consciousness. While consciousness remains a complex concept, current scientific consensus suggests that conscious experiences likely originate in the brain. This includes emotional experiences. However, the body can still influence our emotions in various ways. Two well-known theories regarding the emotional interaction between the body and brain are the James-Lange theory and the Cannon-Bard theory, which are explained further in the detailed answer below.

Longer answer

The short answer to this question is: ‘almost certainly the brain’. When talking about experience, we mean the conscious feeling we have about things that happen to us. Consciousness is a very difficult topic that has troubled many philosophers and a complete theory of consciousness is not yet known. However, all the current data suggests that conscious experiences are located somewhere in the brain.¹ But perhaps this is an unsatisfying answer, because your reaction might be, well sometimes I can start to feel my heart beat faster and faster and this causes me to feel certain emotions like fear or excitement. So there definitely is some interplay between the heart (or body) and the brain when it comes to emotion.

Two theories

There have been several theories of emotion which claim different things. Two famous ones are the James Lange theory and the Cannon-Bard theory, which claim almost opposite things. Let’s take the example of seeing a snake near your feet. The obvious response would be fear, but how does this response arise?

Theory 1: James Lange

The James Lange theory explains this as such: when you see the snake, your heart rate goes up and your pupils dilate, this is your body getting ready to get out of there. Your brain then interprets these changes in your body and realizes that there is something to fear, so it creates the conscious emotion of fear.² There is indeed a lot of data showing that bodily reactions can at the very least influence your emotions.³

Theory 2: Cannon-Bard

The Cannon-Bard theory on the other hand formulates that the bodily responses and the conscious experience are independent of each other. They both arise at the same time after seeing the snake at your feet.⁴ The work of Joseph Ledoux on the amygdala, an important brain area in fear, supports this theory.⁵ He has shown that there are two pathways in the brain related to this, namely the ‘Low Road’ (eyes → thalamus → amygdala) and the ‘High Road’ (eyes → thalamus → cortex → amygdala). Triggering these pathways can create a fear response, without intervention of bodily functions like heart rate. The High Road is similar to what the Cannon-Bard theory describes: this pathway goes past the cortex, which is where the conscious experience of the snake would arise, before going to the amygdala, activating the fear response. The Low Road is like a reflex. The fear response is immediately triggered when the brain thinks it sees a big threat even before becoming conscious of it. This response is very useful in highly dangerous situations as it’s faster than the High Road, giving that split second you might need to escape.

Something in between

So although the emotions we experience are most likely created within our brains, the rest of our body can still play an important role in influencing these emotions. To what extent and in which situations the body can influence the brain and vice versa will differ and is probably an interplay of the different theories explained above.