The Emotion Machine

What makes one person different than another? Many may say it’s a combination of genes and environment, but recent neuroscience shows that it’s more than just that.

In an interesting study published in Science, neuroscientists studied the brains of 40 mice who were genetically identical and grew up in the same exact environment.

They found that despite these genetic and environmental similarities, the mice each culminated their own individual experiences which contributed to underlying changes in their brain’s wiring.

Due to these unique experiences, each mouse developed different brain and behavioral patterns while interacting with their environment, and over the course of 3 months these differences continued to increase in size over time.

Specifically, they noticed significant changes develop in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory.

Read the rest…

Meditation has existed as a form of mental training for thousands of years, but it’s only recently that psychologists and neuroscientists have discovered just how much of a change it can make in our lives.

Last year UCLA researchers found that those who had a long-term practice in meditation showed structural changes in parts of the brain associated with self-regulation and emotional processing.

They looked at brain scans and saw a process known as gyrification in the insula, the part of the brain that involves self-awareness. This process of gyrification is a “folding” of layers in the brain that enhances neural processing, improving the brain’s ability to process information, make decisions, and form memories.

And now, according to a study published in Conscious Cognition, meditation can also lead to changes in the expression of our genes.

Read the rest…

In an interesting “1st Annual Love Competition” associated with The Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging, contestants had 5 minutes in an fMRI machine to love someone as hard as they could.

The brain regions involved in producing the neurochemical experience of love were measured, and the contestant who generated the greatest level of activity in those areas would be the winner.

Here is an excellent short film on the competition along with a background story behind each contestant (and what object of “love” they chose to focus on for the 5 minutes).

The contest is definitely not a true scientific study. As you can tell from the interviews, each individual focused on a different kind of love. The older man who came in first place reflected on his 50 year healthy and intimate relationship with his wife. The 10 year old who came in second reminisced on the fun moments he’s had with his baby cousin.

Another young man focused on an ex-girlfriend he used to love but, as it turned out, his feelings weren’t as strong as they used to be. And one participant didn’t even focus on a particular person, but instead did a kind of loving-kindness meditation where she focused on producing “warm feelings” in her chest and head (she described it as a shortened “chakra meditation”). Unfortunately the video doesn’t tell us how well she did.

As you can see, everyone has different interpretations of love, which can make it hard to accurately measure. Neuroscientists believe that increases in certain hormones like oxytocin are related to trust, social recognition, intimacy, empathy, pair-bonding and other behaviors we often associate with love. Oxytocin is even sometimes referred to as “the love hormone.”

However, in “The Love Competition,” researchers determined the winner by who had the strongest signal in a part of the brain called the nuclues accumbens. This region of the brain is often associated with reward and pleasure, and studies show that the nuclues accumbens often becomes very activated when long-married couples stare at a picture of a loved one.

Mind Hacks contacted Melina Uncapher, one of the Stanford researchers behind the contest, who said this:

“I should say at the outset that it was not intended to be a study, nor was it intended to discover anything new about the brain. It was intended to be a public outreach piece, to help raise awareness that science can be beautiful (in the hopes of advancing interest in science). The finding was simply this: when a group of participants were instructed to ruminate on the person or concept they associate with love, BOLD signal in the nucleus accumbens showed individual differences.

Here, the person with the highest signal in nucleus accumbens was considered the winner. Contestants were instructed to this prior to entering in the scanner. They all met each other during the interviewing stage, so there was a bit of competitiveness in the air, but it was tempered by the fact that they were considering those they love.”

So while this contest is really interesting, it’s definitely not science. In the future, I hope to see much more legitimate research on the neuroscience behind love, especially the different types of love we tend to act out throughout our daily lives (friendship, romantic, compassion, etc.) – and hopefully we can learn more about their similarities and differences.

Stay updated on new articles on psychology and self-improvement here.

Emotional styles determine how we react to the experiences in our lives and how likely we are to have particular emotional moods. Davidson has mapped out these emotional differences in the brain. And in his new book The Emotional Life of Your Brain, he goes over many ways these emotional styles affect our lives and personalities.

Everyone goes about their emotions in a different way. Richard Davidson, a leading researcher of emotions, and also a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, claims that we each have different emotional styles, which are comprised of six different components.

Your emotional style is based on:

Resilience, which is how quickly or slowly you recover from negative emotions. For example, some people can hold onto fears or grudges for years, while others may let things go after only a day.

Outlook, which is the duration of your positive emotions. For example, some people may experience positive feelings like joy to be very fleeting, while others tend to sustain these feelings much longer.

Context, which is the degree to which you modulate your emotional responses in a context-appropriate way. For example, you probably won’t talk to your boss about the same things as you would when you talk to your spouse or child. In the same way, we often modulate our emotional responses differently depending on the person we are talking to and the setting we are in.

Social Intuition, which is your sensitivity to social cues, including facial expressions and verbal expressions. This part of your emotional style refers to your ability to understand and empathize with other people’s emotional worlds.

Self Awareness, which is the extent to which you are aware of emotional signals within your own body and mind. The more aware you aware of your own emotions, the better you’ll be able to manage them. Most people respond to their emotions without ever stopping to reflect on them.

Attention, which is how focused or scattered your mind is. Are you able to focus your attention on one thing at a time, or do you find yourself being easily distracted? Davidson’s research shows attention plays a key role in emotional regulation.

The most important finding in Davidson’s research is that we also have the capacity to change our emotional styles.

New research has found that genes which are associated with our emotional temperament can gradually change their expression based on our environment, behaviors, and life experiences. And through mental training like mindfulness meditation and CBT, we can rewire our brains to respond to emotions in different ways.

In a recent interview with Salon, Davidson says:

“I think that we’ve learned a lot about what can induce these plastic changes in the brain. It’s quite similar to engaging in physical exercise or learning to play a musical instrument or chess. All of these require regular practice in order to become more fluent in them, and it’s the same for happiness. Well-being can be thought of as a skill; you learn it better when you practice it over time. Many of my suggestions in that last chapter of the book come from different strands of research, but they all point to the idea that we can take responsibility for our own brain. Often, we leave our emotional patterns to happenstance and we don’t intentionally cultivate them. But we shouldn’t think of emotional style as any different than cognitive skills, or activities with a tradition of intentional training. Eastern contemplative tradition, and particularly meditation, is exactly this technology of mental exercise. It fosters better habits of mind, and our neuroscientific research has shown this.”

One example of this neuroscience research is Davidson’s findings on the role of the pre-frontal cortex in emotional regulation. Previously, neuroscientists believed that emotions were mostly associated with the amygdala. On the other hand, the pre-frontal cortex was associated with thinking, reason, and problem-solving. These brain regions were once seen as separate entities, but now neuroscientists know they are highly interconnected with one another.

Through brain imaging research, Davidson has found that the more connections there are between the amygdala and pre-frontal cortex, the better we tend to be at managing emotions.

In one study, he used electrodes to measure brain activity and then showed participants videos and pictures that elicited feelings such as fear, sadness, or joy. They then measured how long it took for the participant to recover or “bounce back” from these emotionally charged states. Davidson discovered that activity in the left pre-frontal cortex was much higher in individuals who were more resilient to negative emotions. He infers that the left pre-frontal cortex sends inhibitory messages to the amygdala telling it to “quiet down.”

This interrelation between the pre-frontal cortex and amygdala play a big role in determining our “emotional styles.” People with fewer connections tend to be poorer emotional regulators, making them more irritable, quick-tempered, and impatient. They are also less aware of their own emotional states, which makes it more difficult for them to manage their emotions in a healthy way.

Strategies for emotional regulation.

Psychologists have come up with various strategies to help individuals better regulate their emotions by changing how the brain responds to emotional stimuli. These strategies include:

• Find out what triggers your emotions to understand what they are caused by.
• Be more mindful of your inner states by observing your emotions in the moment (both physical and mental components).
• Describe what you are feeling in a non-judgmental way. State the facts without resorting to labels like “good” and “bad” or “right” and “wrong.”
• Investigate emotions by asking yourself questions like, “Why do I feel this way?” or “What are my emotions trying to tell me?” Sometimes there is a logic behind our emotions than we can learn from and improve.
• Practice responding to emotions in new and constructive ways (for example, exercising, writing, or painting).
• If possible, try to avoid triggers (behaviors, people, situations, or environments) that may elicit strong negative emotions.
• If possible, engage in positive activities to reverse negative patterns (such as watching a funny movie or reading an exciting book).
• Meditate on your breath to help cultivate a more focused, calm, and non-reactive mind. This helps avoid what some psychologists call “emotion mind,” which is when our thoughts and behaviors are completely overrun by emotionally-charged states (like when someone acts out aggressively in the “heat of the moment.”) One resource I recommend is the 100 Breaths Meditation.

These are the most notable ways psychologists have found that we can change our emotional styles.

Please keep in mind however that changing the wiring in your brain is a long and gradual process. You have to make a conscious effort to become more aware of your emotions and how to manage them in different ways – you have to actively choose new ways to think, new ways to behave, and new environments that best suit your emotional style. It’s hard work, but Davidson’s research shows us that it’s possible.

Stay updated on new articles on psychology and self-improvement here.