The topic that my group had picked to discuss was emotions. Emotions are something that each and everyone one of us feels and experiences on a daily basis. Emotions are formed by many different areas in the brain because they work together to perceive a stimulus that is being presented; the person reacts emotionally based on what they perceive. Phineas Gage is known for the incident he had encountered and how the brain damage had altered his emotions. In 1884 the first theory of emotions was released by James and Lange which has shown society how emotions work. The limbic system is a major part that works and forms your emotions the different parts in the limbic system need to work together to pass the information. Everyday you have facial expressions and based off of those facial expressions the people around you can tell how you are feeling. Males are known to act out more than women based of their emotions and how they perceive them compared to others. Many studies have been done to show society how emotions work within the brain and why we react the way we do, when we do.
The limbic system is a major part of your brain that allows you to feel emotions based on the stimuli that you are perceiving, damage to any part of this area will cause a person's emotions to change. In the limbic system it consists of the septum, cingulate cortex, fornix, olfactory bulb, hypothalamus, amygdala, mammillary body, and your hippocampus. In the textbook Biopsychology Tenth Edition it states “In 1937, Papez proposed that emotional expression is controlled by several interconnected nuclei and tracts that ring the thalamus”(453). This quote shows that all of the above stated parts of the brain are connected together for a person to be able to show expressions like how they are feeling at the time. If a person was to damage any of the connected parts they would no longer be able to fully show an emotion towards something like they did before anything was damaged. In Biopsychology Tenth Edition Etkin states “The medial portion of the prefrontal lobes are the sites of the emotion-cognition interaction that have received the most attention”(464). This is another part located where the thalamus is in the brain and plays a major part in how you feel. When studies have been done relating emotions and what part of the brain they come from, it has showed these lobes lighting up when they put events in front of a person that will have them react scared, or happy. Damage to the frontal lobe decreases a person's ability to have ranges of different emotions. In Biopsychology Tenth Edition it states “Papez proposed that emotional states are expressed through the action of the other structures of the circuit on the hypothalamus and that they are experienced through their actions on the cortex”(453). When other structures in the circuit are not receiving the information correctly or are not gathering anything at all the person will not experience emotions toward anythings. The parts of the limbic system are required to work together for a person to be able to feel a way about anything or to know why a person is feeling the way that they are.
Phineas Gage is a well known person because of the brain damage that he had encountered and how it affected him and his emotions. In the textbook Damasio states “Formerly a religious, respectful, reliable man, Gage became irreverent and impulsive. In particular, his abundant profanity offended many”(451). Gage was at work when he was struck in the head by a iron rod that had went through the front of his brain. The damage occurred mostly in the medial prefrontal lobes; this is where your emotions are formed. Due to the damage of Gage's brain he was not able to come out of this situation as the man he was before, he began to hurt many people's feelings because he was no longer able to tell how he was feeling or understand why all of these people were being hurt by the emotions that he was sharing. This event was the first major event where researchers were able to conduct a study on what part of the brain were affected based on how Gage had changed and started acting.
The first people to create the theory of emotions was James and Lange in 1884, they considered it the James-Lange Theory. This theory consists of when a person perceives something they react and then they feel a certain way because of their reaction. The theory states as an example “The perception of a bear, psychological reactions, then the feeling of fear”(453). This example was in reference to when a person sees a bear they then mentally go through how to react to seeing that bear, and then finally realize that they are scared of the bear and they don't know what to do to get away. In Biopsychology Tenth Edition it states “James and Lange argued that the automatic activity and behavior that are triggered by the emotional event produce the feeling of emotion, not vice versa”(452). One believed that the feeling of emotion came from the behavior that is triggered, but it was the other way around. A person needs a behavior or activity triggered in order for them to feel emotion about it. If a person is not triggered by something they will keep a neutral emotion on what happened. This theory was used to show people that when you see something fearful, it has to go through your brain how to feel about it based on what your mind already knows about something and in this case it is the bear.
Ekman and his colleagues believed that emotions and facial expressions come hand and hand. It is known depending on how your facial expression is someone else will be able to tell how you are feeling because it shows you are physically expressing your emotions without verbally telling someone. Their are known to be just six primary emotions and the rest of the emotions that someone is feeling are just based off of a combination of a bunch of other emotions. In Biopsychology Tenth Edition it states “Ekman and friesen concluded that the facial expressions of the following six emotions are primary: surprise, anger, sadness, disgust, fear and happiness”(455). These six emotions are what make up all of are other main emotions, the other emotions that we feel or express do not have their own name unlike the primary ones that are stated above. If a person is feeling two types of ways you are not able to tell by their facial expression. Ekman stated in Biopsychology Tenth Edition “Several studies have found that people of different cultures make similar facial expressions in similar situations and they they can correctly identify the emotional significance of facial expressions displayed by people of other cultures other than their own”(455). Just because a person is from a different part of the world does not mean that their emotions are different from ours. Everyone is the same emotion wise, because all emotions are formed by the brain in the same way. When you see a person smiling it will make you smile or when a person is angry it will make you angry because you have to be around it.
Aggression and testosterone levels were studied by Soma and their colleagues, they produced these different studies to show mens stages at certain stages because men are known to have more social aggression than females do. Soma in the textbook states “A few studies have found that violent male criminals and aggressive male athletes tend to have higher testosterone levels than normal; however, this correlation may indicates that aggressive behaviors increase testosterone, rather than vice versa”(459). It goes back and forth between studies showing that aggression is caused by higher levels of testosterone and aggressive behavior causes higher levels on testosterone. Studies have been done and showed proof of both, so there's no direct answer on if a male's testosterone levels are what causes anger or is their anger causes their testosterone levels to rise.
Fear conditioning is also apart of your emotions and why you feel the way you do about something. One example of fear conditioning could be when you hear a noise and something bad happens to you and each time you hear this noise something bad happens to you, you then begin to become angry or scared of this noise and you will always feel that way whenever the noise is presented to you. In Biopsychology Tenth Edition it states “Fear conditioning is the establishment of fear is response to a previously neutral stimulus by presenting it, usually several times, before the delivery of an aversive stimulus”(460). If something is delivered to a person's brain just once they are less likely to recognize it later on unlike when it is shown to them multiple times over and over again. If you see something in the environment that scares you and you continue to see it everytime you go by that area you will then begin to fear that area because you will always think of that negative event when you go there. Maren states in Biopsychology Tenth Edition “For example, if you repeatedly encountered a bear on a particular trail in the forest, the trail itself would begin to elicit fear”(460). The bear is not necessarily what gives you fear but the trail that the bear has been on many times begins to scare you because you know the bear is somewhere near. Lesions to a part of your brain can cause you to not be able to form the emotion fear but you are still able to form responses on the situation. In the textbook Biopsychology Tenth Edition it states “Bilateral hippocampal lesions block the subsequent development of a fear response to the context without blocking the development of a few response to the explicit conditional stimulus”(461). The hippocampus is one of the parts of the limbic system that allows you to form emotions without it functioning correctly the person's emotions will then alter.
Emotions are formed all over the brain not just in one small area. Based on the situation a person is placed into is what part of the brain the emotional will be felt but is then sent to where emotions are perceived and shown to the person or another. In Biopsychology Tenth Edition Feinstein states “Brain activity associated with each human emotion is diffuse-there is not a center for each emotion”(462). If one person feels scared and another person is happy it could be possible that on a brain scan that their emotion lights up in the same spot because you never know where you will feel an emotion or why it may be in one spot for one study but another one for another study. In the textbook it states “For example, the activity observed in sensory and motor cortex during the experience of human emotions is now believed to be an important part of the mechanism by which emotions are experienced”(463). In this one study it was shown that emotions mostly appeared in the sensory and motor cortex; not as much anywhere else. Everyone's brain is different and how they perceive emotions is also different, but everybody is the same when it comes to the limbic system and perceiving and showing emotions. Fastenrath states “Indeed, the amygdalae appear to play a role in the performance of any task with an emotional component, whether positive or negative”(463). No matter how good or bad you are feeling everyone is the same in the brain when it comes to the use of the amygdala. Emotions are formed all over the brain even though different parts of everyone's brain are used for different emotions.
To conclude, emotions are a major part in everyone's life whether it is about a situation that is occuring or just a facial expression. The limbic system plays a major part in your brain that allows you to feel emotions based on the stimuli that you are perceiving. Phineas Gage incident has helped society figure out why damage to a certain lobe is able to change your emotions and how you act. James-Lange theory was the first theory on emotions that has also helped society understand how emotions and the brain work based off of the stimuli given. A person who fears something and constantly runs into the same situation will always fear that area. Emotions show up in all parts of our brain, with damage to any of the parts of the limbic system it will change how a person acts and feels; without being able to read other people's emotions.