Written by: Winnie Ou
Email: ouwinnie23@gmail.com
Introduction
The average person experiences over 400 emotional experiences every day. Emotions can be defined as “complex patterns of changes made in response to a situation perceived to be personally significant”. The universally accepted standard of emotions was compiled by Ekman, Friesen, and Ellsworth. These seven basic emotions are fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust, and surprise. Emotions are crucial as they help humans survive influencing our perception and behavior. With the importance of emotions, our brain has a network of structures and even activates several parts of the brain to produce a certain emotion. The strong connection between emotions and our brain continues to be studied and how emotions affect our behaviors.
Exploring Emotions And Their Regulations
With the complexity of emotions, some emotions require networks of activation, and many parts of the brain work together to produce an emotion. There are a variety of emotions and humans often produce conflicting feelings. The functions of emotions are to prepare for action, direct attention, communication of internal behavior, and influence cognitive function. This section discusses a few emotions and the parts of the brain that collectively work to process emotions in humans.
Fear
Fear is an emotion we feel when a stressor, defined as events that demand us to create a need for change, can incite within us and our physiology. Fear is so crucial to our survival as it can illicit us to freeze or flee. Before you or your body can react, your brain already recognizes a tense, scary stimulus in situations and prepares you for survival. There are several chemicals involved in this stimulation such as cholecystokinin and stress plays an active role in the freeze, fight, or flight response, all helping our brain and nervous system gear up towards the stressor or dangerous situation.
The part of the brain extensively working with fear is the amygdala. The visual cortex from the thalamus sends information to our amygdala, provoking a reaction to the “fear” before our conscious minds realize what is happening. Our memories of a fear stressor or stimulus, fear conditioning, and initiation of behaviors can induce our amygdala to react. Poor amygdala functions have been shown to lead to decreased fear recognition and behaviors.
Many studies have proven that fear can trigger other emotions such as anger or stress. In many cases, due to the stimulus inciting a flight or fight response, the experienced fear can build up to anger, usually being aggressive, when the flight action is proven difficult. Flee or fight and anger or fear can be interchanged. Fear is a powerful emotion with its survival reaction and the neural basis of emotion regulation behind it.
Happiness
Ideally, happiness is an emotion every individual would like to experience once. Many people spend their time trying to achieve “true” happiness however, there are two different categories of happiness. Happiness can be separated into hedonic happiness and eudaimonic happiness. Simply put, hedonic happiness can be felt when there is intense pleasure, both psychological and physical. Eudaimonic happiness derives from achieving a personal goal or when we truly feel our potential has been expressed. We constantly hear the words “dopamine” and “serotonin” being thrown around but what are they? These two chemicals are released by the brain affecting how we feel. Dopamine is released and we feel temporary pleasure, whereas serotonin creates a feeling of long-lasting happiness. Positive moods can be associated but perhaps not directly correlated with increased levels of dopamine and serotonin released within your brain and vice versa.
There is not a specific part of the brain associated with happiness however, the limbic system has a strong influence in identifying the types of emotions. Without a metabolistic connection to the limbic system, depression is increased in individuals. The limbic system is composed of the hypothalamus, amygdala, thalamus, and hippocampus. Imagination and stored joyful memories can activate the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. There is still more research that needs to be conducted about happiness and the emotional regulation behind it. fMRI experiment has proven that releasing dopamine and other chemicals related to happiness has increased cognitive effects and boosts positive emotions.
Sadness and Grief
Some regions of the brain that may evoke emotions of sadness and grief are the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), midbrain periaqueductal gray, dorsomedial thalamus, and ventral septum. Strong evidence shows that the ACC is related to sadness as it induces the vocalization for crying and its role in suffering and feelings of depression through the use of neuroimaging studies. These regions are susceptible to unpleasant stimuli and neurotransmitters that prevent sadness and grief. Drugs such as morphine and heroin that artificially produce feelings of happiness affect these regions and slowly become more and more addictive. The drugs block the regions from feeling painful emotions such as grief, loneliness, and failure.
Sadness and grief can be described as feelings that are indicative of loss, helplessness, and failure. Painful experiences such as the death of a loved one, not being able to receive a desired item, and separation evokes these emotions. The psychological studies of sadness and grief have been extensively studied and oftentimes, when punishment or distressing stimuli are introduced, hedonic happiness and positive emotions drastically decrease. Grief and sadness are powerful emotions that produce all kinds of feelings and thoughts within humans and our emotional minds that could also affect our bodies.
Desire
Often we have heard of desire as a pathway to lust and greed. Desire can be described as the feeling of “wanting”. Humans naturally have a desire to want materialistic goods, love, and other appealing stimuli. Our brain is wired to lead us to seek out our desires and fulfill them. When this system is not pleased, the individual may become depressed or helpless. Desire as an emotion itself is not a terrible thing however, when combined with other factors and being unsatisfied, it can lead to harm rather than good. Desire can motivate a person to continue seeking more but it can be detrimental to their feelings, bodies, and more.
When you desire and “want” something, the brain parts that turn on are the lateral hypothalamus, amygdala, nucleus accumbens, and frontal cortex. Using electrodes in studies, when a pleasant stimulus is presented, animals were conditioned to press a lever to signify that they found the stimulus gratifying. Dopamine activates these regions and it can create a feeling of satisfaction and happiness when the desire is fulfilled. The left frontal cortex is more active with appetite and delicious foods. Increased frontal activation in situations has been linked to dopamine when a hungry appetite has been satisfied. The relationship between left frontal activation and happiness with their desires was proven in a healthy cognitive mind. Overall, having desires can increase these regions' activation.
Plasticity and the Benefits of Emotions
Our brain is susceptible to memories, changes, and human experiences. All of these things can alter the way our brain behaves and our cognitive and emotional minds. This is referred to as “brain plasticity.” Our brain when facing stressful situations vs. a comforting one can shrink or increase different regions. When we introduce drugs or painful interactions, it can drastically change our brains. Our brain is a powerful device that controls our sensory, cognitive, motor, and social interactions thus, we should cherish and protect it as much as possible.
Brain Plasticity
After a traumatic event such as a car accident, brain aneurysm, or stroke, your brain can become damaged. Damage to the temporal lobe can lead to pronounced damage to emotional and social changes in a person’s behavior. The frontal lobe handles judgment, planning, new memories, and personalities. Suffering a traumatic event can change the function of these lobes and the person may not perform these actions. However, with neurorehabilitation practices, due to the plasticity of the brain, patients can recover some of these cognitive and motor functions again. Plasticity is defined as “the ability to change itself after being damaged.” Plasticity is important as it reshapes neural pathways in our central and autonomic nervous systems. Environmental exercise for the brain has been proven to have many beneficial effects on plasticity. These exercises improve brain disorders, cognitive development, and stimulation of neuro-motors that control the levels of emotions, motivation, affection, etc. The concept of emotional intelligence can be helped with neuroplasticity as emotional awareness or memory can be diminished. Overall, brain plasticity is a crucial step in recovering processes and emotion regulation.
Importance of Emotions
Even though you may experience emotions every day, there are physiological benefits of emotions. For example, when there are intense stimuli, it activates the sympathetic nervous system and fear prepares you to fight or flee. Emotions can influence your cognitive functions and can be argued that emotional states can affect your thoughts. If you are sad, it can reduce your tendency to be persuaded and become more careful. Emotions are crucial for understanding who we are, social interactions, how to behave, and more. We need emotions and understanding the reasons behind our emotions affecting ourselves and others.
Conclusion
Research in neurological science has helped us understand the emotional, motivational, and behavioral processes that are happening in our brains. The development of these studies can assist us in identifying more complex emotions and what regions emotions occur in. Studies on experiences and memories in the brain and neuroplasticity can further advance. Complex human emotions like desire, love, grief, and sadness fuel the human body and the way we interact with others. These connections are what make emotions and understanding the neurological regulation of emotional basis so important and more research can be done on this subject.
Works Cited
Bhadha , Bakhtawar. “16.1: The Neurological Bases of Emotions.” Social Sci LibreTexts, ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI), 8 Dec. 2021, socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Psychology/Biological_Psychology/Biopsychology_(OERI)_-_DRAFT_for_Review/16%3A_Emotion_and_Stress/16.01%3A_The_Neurological_Bases_of_Emotions. Accessed 6 Feb. 2024.
Dfarhud, Dariush, et al. “Happiness & Health: The Biological Factors- Systematic Review Article.” Iranian Journal of Public Health, vol. 43, no. 11, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Nov. 2014, pp. 1468–77, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4449495/.
Etkin, Amit, et al. “The Neural Bases of Emotion Regulation.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience, vol. 16, no. 11, Oct. 2015, pp. 693–700, https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn4044. Accessed 14 Nov. 2019.
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Gu Simeng , Wang Fushun , Cao Caiyun , Wu Erxi , Tang Yi-Yuan , Huang Jason H. "An Integrative Way for Studying Neural Basis of Basic Emotions With fMRI" Frontiers in Neuroscience Volume 13 2019 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.00628 DOI=10.3389/fnins.2019.00628 ISSN=1662-453X
TY - CHAP AU - Daum, Irene AU - Markowitsch, Hans AU - Vandekerckhove, Marie PY - 2009/01/01 SP - 111 EP - 138 SN - 978-0-387-74134-5 T1 - "Neurobiological Basis of Emotions" VL - DO - 10.1007/978-0-387-09546-2_6 JO - Emotions as Bio-cultural Processes ER
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