Figure 1. Four hypotheses for emotion processing in the brain have been put forward.

(Figure based on [15]. The right hemisphere hypothesis (a) assumes that emotion is processed predominantly in the right hemisphere. The valence hypothesis (b) suggests the right hemisphere to be dominant in processing negative emotions and the left hemisphere to be dominant in processing positive emotions. The one-network hypothesis (c) posits that all emotions may be processed by a set of brain regions not specific to a respective emotion category, while the localist hypothesis (d) is that processing of different emotions specifically corresponds to activation in distinct brain regions.