Your Emotions
and Your Brain
by Ellen Wright Woodruff
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Your Emotions and Your Brain
This book is about being human and having emotions. We all have emotions and our brain helps us to manage them. People often talk about their emotions. They wonder how they will manage when they have big feelings.
Our emotions tell us what makes us feel stronger and supported. They also help us by alerting us to what could endanger our survival or hurt us.
Looking at this red panda makes me smile, but if I saw him in the wild, I might make him feel unsafe.
Humans have 7 basic emotions. All of the others come from these. The 7 basic emotions are: joy/happy, anger, fear, sad, disgust, surprise and seeking/anticipation. Other emotions that we talk about are part of a range of one of the seven. An example is extreme anger is rage. Mild anger might be annoyed.
We have feelings or emotions when we are babies. We continue to grow and learn to understand and manage our emotions as we get older. Babies cry when they are hungry or wet. They are unhappy. As we get older we understand our needs and what our body is telling us, so we don't need to cry to get help.
Sometimes we feel happy. It could be because we feel safe or because we are with family or friends we love. It could be that we are doing something we enjoy, like Makayla.
When we feel an emotion, people often see it on our faces, Humans have 42 facial muscles that they use to make facial expressions. When we begin to experience a feeling our brain has to send messages to our facial muscles to do their job. It happens fast but when it does, you will see a smile, a frown or whatever other feeling they are having. Scientists have studied this and learned that people match the facial expressions to the same emotion around the world.
Animals have emotions and often show how they feel on their faces. We can not understand their cognitive processes however. People show emotions on their faces but can also talk about how they are feeling so we can understand.
Neuroscientists study people's brains, emotions and cognitive processes. Neuroscience is the study of the brain and nervous system. The brain has four lobes: the temporal, the occipital, the parietal and the frontal. The amygdala is under the lobes near the brain stem.
Our brain watches for threats or rewards automatically. If it sees one, the brain releases chemical messages to our body. Then we feel our emotion. When it is a threat, we may fight or take flight. When it is a reward, we feel supported and may want to try to keep doing our best.
Different areas of our brain are activated when we have different emotions. These have been seen when doctors do a tests called an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) or a CT scan (Computed Tomography).
When we have a problem and are upset, our brain can help us to calm. Sometimes we just need to stop and breathe and let our brain slow us down to think about how to manage.
Our brains are amazing. They help us to learn, give messages to our bodies so we can do the things we do, and they help us to be aware of threats or possible rewards.
Next time you have a big emotion, remember your brain is helping you when you don't even know it!
References
Beck, Julie (2015). Hard Feelings: Science's Struggle to Define Emotions. The Atlantic.
Celeghin A, Diano M, Bagnis A, Viola M and Tamietto M (2017) Basic Emotions in Human Neuroscience: Neuroimaging and Beyond. Front. Psychol. 8:1432. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01432
Kragel, P.A. and LaBar, K.S. (2016) Decoding the Nature of Emotion in the Brain. Trends Cogni Sci. 2016 Jun: 20(6); 444-455.
Shackman, A.J. and Wager, T.D. (2019) The emotional brain: Fundamental questions and strategies for future research. Neurosci Lett. 2019 Feb 6: 693:68-74.
Université de Genève. "Babies make the link between emotions expressed vocally and facially." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 11 April 2018.