Mixed emotions may not be mixed after all
Like the rest of us, psychologists wonder whether emotions feel the same to people from different cultures around the world. Recent research from the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behavior and Development, at Western Sydney University, summarized in Discover Magazine, tried to figure it out. The researchers looked at how communities with varying level... See more
Pamela Pavliscak • Ghost in the machine
good way to answer this question is in terms of your brain’s three operating systems. If you feel worried, tense, pushed on, or helpless, that triggers the avoiding harms system, so you’d be particularly helped by “resource experiences” related to this system, such as protection, safety, relaxation, strength, and agency. Sadness, disappointment, fr
... See moreRick Hanson • Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence
The brain uses concepts to make sense of data. Emotions like “fear,” “sadness,” and “disappointment” are concepts just like any other. Just as your brain interprets a pattern of light as a “window,” it might interpret a pattern of bodily sensations as “fear” or “disappointment.”
Tiago Forte • How Emotions Are Made: The Theory of Constructed Emotion
At a neuroanatomical level, when we experience conflicting feelings it is because we have two emotional groups of cells that are completely separate from one another in that they do not share any cell bodies.
Jill Bolte Taylor • Whole Brain Living
There probably are circuits that bias is towards alertness or interoception vs. exteroception.