Emotions correspond to different sensations in the body

By Irada Yunusova

     Most people believe that emotions are felt by the heart, or the mind, or by both. However, recent research indicates that emotions are felt by the whole body. Sensations felt in the head, limbs, and chest vary by emotion, so different levels of sensations correspond to an individual's emotional state.

     In a recent Finnish study, 5 experiments were run in which participants from Finland, Sweden, and Taiwan were given outlines of a body and asked to color in the regions where they felt warmer or cooler in certain body parts in response to 13 emotions. After comparing the responses, researchers found that all 13 emotions, including anger, fear, surprise, happiness, and depression, were all very different. However, the patterns of color were consistent across participants from different cultures.

     The diagram above depicts the results of the study, where blue indicates diminished sensation and yellow indicates elevated sensation. Most individuals found that anger increased sensation in the limbs, while sadness decreased it. Happiness was unique in its ability to increase sensation in all parts of the body. So the cliche happy feeling "all over" or the butterflies in your stomach from love are actually accurate descriptions of a person's emotional state.

     The results of this study, gathered from healthy individuals, allows researchers to better grasp the mind-body link. It also encourages further study to understand the mind-body link's role in mood disorders, possibly providing another means of diagnosing psychological conditions. The meaningful findings in this study demonstrate how both scientists and individuals themselves can better understand the human body and it's emotions.

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2013/12/31/emotions-body-mapping-finnish-study/4260281/

An Explanation of Why Emotion Causes Stronger Memories

Picture a moment of your life that really scared you.  Did you picture it more vividly than you would a less fear-inducing memory? It is common knowledge in the psychological world that events in our lives that scared us or brought out another strong emotional response tend to be remembered more clearly.  Scientists have been searching for explanations of this phenomenon on a biological level for quite some time.  Research from the University of California in Berkeley provides a new way of understanding why this happens.

The high level of activation in the amygdala, the part of the brain centered on the fear and emotional response, actually will cause activity occur in a separate area of the brain called the hippocampus.  The hippocampus is a relay area for memory and the home of many immature stem cells.  If the emotional reaction to a situation is strong enough, the amygdala will cause the hippocampus to use a unique population of stem cells and create new memory-related neurons.  The implication is that these new neurons may be an important cause for the vivid encoding of memory.

In disorders revolving around emotional memories, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or, in some cases, depression and other forms of anxiety, there may be faulty regulation of the functionality of these young cells.  Perhaps by knowing this, developments in the psychiatric world can be made in an attempt to correct this problem. 


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110614131958.htm