Figure 1. A line closer to the perimeter of the circle indicates that this network shows a higher activity for the feeling of anger this picture is a screenshot from a video created by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, hmhco. Let me try to explain a bit more. Your brain locked in its dark, silent box we call the skull tries to figure out what these bodily sensations mean based on both the information it receives from the outside world through your senses and based on past experience. Figure 2.
Picture representing how our brain stuck inside the dark box called skull uses current and past information to make sense of what is going on. Information from the outside world comes in through the senses air pressure, light, chemicals. Information from the inside world aches, shivers, tightness comes in via the interoceptive network. Past experiences are stored in the brain this picture is an adapted screenshot from a video created by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, hmhco.
The main task of the brain is to keep you alive and well. To achieve this, it constantly monitors your inner and outer world and redistributes energy to the body part that currently needs it the most. While monitoring the outside world, the brain is not just a passive spectator. Neuroscience research has shown that the brain actually predicts and simulates the outside world. For this, our brain uses concepts. It might be red, or green, and your brain might even simulate the touch of the smooth surface against your hand.
Figure 3. Your brain then compares the simulation with the real-world situation coming in via sensory input. The study of emotional psychology allows researchers to dive into what makes humans react as they do to certain stimuli and how those reactions affect us both physically and mentally. While the study of emotional psychology is vast and complex, researchers have discovered quite a bit about what constitutes our emotions and our behavioral and physical reactions to them. Emotions are often confused with feelings and moods, but the three terms are not interchangeable.
Emotional experiences have three components: a subjective experience, a physiological response and a behavioral or expressive response. Feelings arise from an emotional experience. Because a person is conscious of the experience, this is classified in the same category as hunger or pain. A feeling is the result of an emotion and may be influenced by memories, beliefs and other factors. For example, insults can trigger the emotion of anger while an angry mood may arise without apparent cause.
Defining emotions is a task that is not yet complete. Many researchers are still proposing theories about what makes up our emotions, and existing theories are constantly being challenged. While there is debate about sequence, there is general agreement that emotions, as mentioned earlier, are made up of three parts: subjective experiences, physiological responses and behavioral responses.
All emotions begin with a subjective experience, also referred to as a stimulus, but what does that mean? While basic emotions are expressed by all individuals regardless of culture or upbringing, the experience that produces them can he highly subjective.
Subjective experiences can range from something as simple as seeing a color to something as major as losing a loved one or getting married. No matter how intense the experience is, it can provoke many emotions in a single individual and the emotions each individual feel may be different.
For example, one person may feel anger and regret at the loss of a loved one while another may experience intense sadness. We all know how it feels to have our heart beat fast with fear. The autonomic nervous system controls our involuntary bodily responses and regulates our fight-or-flight response.
According to many psychologists, our physiological responses are likely how emotion helped us evolve and survive as humans throughout history.
In other words, facial expressions play an important role in responding accordingly to an emotion in a physical sense. The behavioral response aspect of the emotional response is the actual expression of the emotion.
Behavioral responses can include a smile, a grimace, a laugh or a sigh, along with many other reactions depending on societal norms and personality. While plentiful research suggests that many facial expressions are universal, such as a frown to indicate sadness, sociocultural norms and individual upbringings play a role in our behavioral responses.
For example, how love is expressed is different both from person to person and across cultures. A study in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology found that while watching negative and positive emotional films, suppression of behavioral responses to emotion had physical effects on the participants. The effects included elevated heart rates.
This suggests that expressing behavioral responses to stimuli, both positive and negative, is better for your overall health than holding those responses inside. Thus, there are benefits of smiling, laughing and expressing negative emotions in a healthy way.
The physiological and behavioral responses associated with emotions illustrate that emotion is much more than a mental state. Emotion affects our whole demeanor and our health. Theories and hypotheses about emotions date back centuries. In fact, basic or primary emotions are referenced in the Book of Rights , a first-century Chinese encyclopedia.
Emotion is much harder to measure and properly define than many other human responses. Much of the study that has been done in emotional psychology is about basic emotions, our psychological and behavioral responses, and the role of emotional intelligence in our lives. Basic emotions are associated with recognizable facial expressions and tend to happen automatically.
Charles Darwin was the first to suggest that emotion-induced facial expressions are universal. As profound as some of the damage is to Antonio Damasio's patients, all of it informs his understanding of how emotions and feelings arise and how they can affect mental illness. In recent years, Damasio has become increasingly interested in the role emotions play in our decision-making processes and in our self-image. In several widely popular books, he has shown how certain feelings are cornerstones of our survival.
And today he argues that our internal, emotional regulatory processes not only preserve our lives but actually shape our greatest cultural accomplishments. Antonio R. Damasio : At first I was interested in all types of neurological injuries. If one area of the brain would lose its ability to function, the patient's behavior could change either dramatically or only subtly. Such patients can hold their own in completely rational arguments but fail, for example, to avoid a situation involving unnecessary risk.
These kinds of problems mainly occur after an injury to the forebrain. As our tests prove, the result is a lack of normal emotional reactions. I continue to be fascinated by the fact that feelings are not just the shady side of reason but that they help us to reach decisions as well. Damasio : In everyday language we often use the terms interchangeably. This shows how closely connected emotions are with feelings.
But for neuroscience, emotions are more or less the complex reactions the body has to certain stimuli. When we are afraid of something, our hearts begin to race, our mouths become dry, our skin turns pale and our muscles contract. This emotional reaction occurs automatically and unconsciously.
Feelings occur after we become aware in our brain of such physical changes; only then do we experience the feeling of fear. Damasio : Yes. The brain is constantly receiving signals from the body, registering what is going on inside of us. It then processes the signals in neural maps, which it then compiles in the so-called somatosensory centers.
Feelings occur when the maps are read and it becomes apparent that emotional changes have been recorded—as snapshots of our physical state, so to speak. MIND : According to your definition, all feelings have their origin in the physical. Is that really the case? Damasio : Interestingly enough, not all feelings result from the body's reaction to external stimuli. Sometimes changes are purely simulated in the brain maps. For example, when we feel sympathy for a sick person, we re-create that person's pain to a certain degree internally.
Also, the mapping of our physical state is never completely exact.
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