In the Heat of the Moment

Are the facial expressions of humans specific to a particular tribe/race or are they universal among all? A research among tribes of Papua New Gunea revealed that the following six basic expressions of humans are nearly invariant among all irrespective of their location and social development.

The basic emotions are:
Happiness, Sadness, Disgust, Surprise, Anger, and Fear.

The question that arises is how are these core basic emotions generated by the brain? Our brain contains structures that we have inherited from our ancestors.

1) The brain step controls sleeping and breathing can be dated back to reptiles.
2) Limbic system is present in early mamals, and
3) The cortex linked to human higher thought process, logic and reason.


The feeling of disgust:
These three parts works together with (3) working on the top of hierarchy. Thoughts and emotions are totally intertwined. A mere thought can trigger an emotion. Dr. Disgust (Paul Rozin) investigates the origin of the smotion of disgust and has an observation that a child of age around 14 months can virtually attempt to eat anything irrespective of its appearance. This young child does not have the feeling of disgust about food, as commonly many elders have. Within few years individuals show the emotion of disgust towards certain foods without even tasting them.

Dr. Rozin believes that sophisticated adult 'disgust' reactions to abstract ideas all developed as a result to the basic response to 'disgust' taste. The feeling of disgust is supposed to be associated with the emotion of civilization. Is there a 'disgust center' in the brain, this hypothesis is checked via MRI. The anterior insula seems teo get activated as the emotion of disgust is stimulated. The same region also gets activated when one feels uncomfortable in the gut. This region of the brain also gets activated when one observes another person getting disgusted. Perhaps the same region gets activated as a warning signal to something disgusting that might occur in near future.

No such regions yet discovered for other feelings of: Happiness, Sadness, Surprise, Anger,

But there is such a region present for: Fear.

Emotion of Fear:

Fear is the most primal and powerful emotion of all other emotions.

Doug Bremer has done research on the aspect of fear and its response to the structure of brain. Why are some people more prone to be fearful after a long exposure/experience with a frearful environment.
One current theory is that fear involves two separate pathways in the brain. An potential threat activates amygdala part of the brain. Amygdala then sends chemicals that trigger responses of sweat and increased hear beat. Another second slower fear response in the brain routs through the cortex, this slower pathway weighs out the potential threat and if the fear was a false alarm, the second pathway shuts down the action of Amygdala and restores normal function of the brain. This prevents the fear response mechanism not be become overpowering by not allowing the clear thought process (which is needed for surviving the potential cause of fear).
Can this balance between the response of amygdala and the cortex region can be upset in a person due to repeated exposure to fearful situations.
In his research with people involved with fearful situations, Dr. Bremner found that the brain region that is responsible for the shutting down of the false fear alarm response isn't functioning as expected control subjects. This inability of shutting down the false-fear response leads to trauma associated with fearful situations. So even the slightest threat unleashes a full terror response in the subjects.
Why can't some people control their fear responses? The answer seems to come from the way people dwell on the past experiences/memories of the past fearful situations. Many subjects were able to recollect their fearful experiences of the past as if they occurred just yesterday.
Another part of the brain called the Hippocampus is also observed to play a vital role in memory. In patients with fearful emotional reminesences, this part of the brain generally is seen to decrease in volume, as observed from many subjects. Constant fear seems to affect the physical structure of the brain.
Ones personal experiences are woven into the fabric of ones brain.

Importance of emotions on value system:
Neurologist Dr. Antonio Damasio says that in ones takes away the emotions that differentiate pain, pleasure, pleasant, unpleasant, then its difficult to have a value system to operate effectively. How emotions influences a person when a person is making a non-logical and difficult decision. At all the time one tries to use logic, current knowledge, and also the experiences of the past events and their corresponding outcomes, the attached emotion to previously experienced event. Using a gambling based game whose rules are unknown to the player, Dr. Damasio concludes that "sematic markers" that refer to the past emotional feelings are used in making future decisions. Looks like unconsciously ones emotions always guiding ones every future move. They make us do what we are doing, worth doing.

Dr. Rebecca Turner on the emotion of Love:
What is it about being in love that creates power emotions, is the area of study of Dr. Turner. Why are the feelings associated with love seems to be uncontrollable?, especially when someone very close goes away. Can one quantify the feeling of love, an attempt is made by studying the harmone called Oxytocin in the blood. Oxytocin receptors are present through the human brain: in the limbic system, in the brain stem, these are the areas that are in control of the emotions observed by a person. Could the presence and reception of Oxytocin in the brain be responsible for the feeling of love? The study found that in women the level of this hormone in the blood seem to rise high when they undergo feeling of love and vice-versa happens upon the feeling of loneliness and sadness.
The level of Oxytocin can be used as a guage to measure the feeling of emotion of love, its patterns. However, how the the presence of this chemical produce the emotion in the brain is a complicated process itself.
Of course, one can always influence the way one feels by deliberately changing the chemistry in the brain. Its done pretty frequently by the consumption of coffee, red-bull, nicotine, etc.

In an experiment 4 subjects are given the same dosage of a stimulant but tow of them are informed that the dosage is a placebo and the other are told about the chemical. In principle, due to the same biochemical effect of the dosage, the effect of this chemical should be the same on all the 4 subjects.

But experiences of the effect of the drugs on 4 subjects were found to be different. The experiences depended on what they were expecting to receive. The subjective experience (feeling) of a subject was found to be highly influenced by the subjects understanding, interpretation of the situation in which the subject is present. So, even though the 4 subjects take the same dose their perceived effect is quite different for all of them depending on their individual understanding of the situation. The understanding of ones situation can be influenced by the prior knowledge, the future expectation of the subject.