Positive emotions and the right parietal cortex

The achievement of a state of solace is a developmental necessity to the unfolding of the capacity for positive emotions. In addition, solace is a significant subjective component of noninstinctual feelings such as love, joy, gratitude, and rapture. Pure solace is experienced primarily in relation to the sense of self, whereas the solace derivatives connect, in varying degrees, with objects external to the self. Psychiatrists see many patients who are unsolaceable and who, because of this, cannot experience sustained positive emotion of any kind. Those diagnosed as personality, conduct, and behaviorally disordered, as well as those with alexithymia, are particularly likely to exhibit a basic unsolaceability. The psychiatrist should also be alert to a deficiency of positive emotion in those with attention deficit disorder and the so-called learning disability syndrome. The coexistence of unsolaceability with features of right parietal cortex dysfunction suggests a directionality of positive emotional experience and parietal neocortical activity. The tertiary zones of the right parietal cortex appear to be the structural system most likely to subserve complex positive affects.