How much do you know about emotions?

We have all kinds of emotions every day, one is happy, the other is depressed, the other is that we are omnipotent, and the other is that we are abandoned by the whole world. When we have emotions, what happens inside our brains and bodies?

Some people compare emotion to the bottom operating system of our human body and reason to the software running on this system. No matter how advanced the software is, if the underlying operating system crashes, no software can run. What we usually call mature people and people with high emotional intelligence are all experts in recognizing emotional language and coping with emotions without exception. Before managing emotions, we must first understand what emotions are. From ancient Greece to the present, thinkers of various schools have tried to define this problem, and there are at least 20 kinds of rough statistics.

In the last century, with the development of neuroscience, people have a better understanding of the structure and operation of the brain. It is found that although the types of emotions are varied and elusive, they always occur in our bodies and always have corresponding physiological basis. As long as we understand how the chemical elements in the brain affect us and how neurons work, we will master the key to deciphering emotional codes.

Usually we confuse emotions and feelings and think that there is no difference between the two concepts, but in fact, emotions and feelings are different. Simply put, emotions can be measured by scientific methods, and feelings can only be described by language. You can understand feelings as the external expression of emotions.

If we want to talk about emotions scientifically, we can't avoid Darwin's works. Darwin founded the theory of evolution, but also left a huge wealth in the field of psychology, that is, a book he published in 1872, whose main value lies in determining that emotions are the result of evolution. From the perspective of evolution, all living things show a natural and primitive emotional mechanism that is conducive to survival. The two poles of this mechanism are approach and avoidance respectively.

Emotionally, close to corresponding pleasure, avoid corresponding pain. For example, getting food and sexual relations is obviously profit-seeking, which can bring survival and reproduction, and correspondingly make the body happy and satisfied. On the contrary, predators or other dangerous situations that frighten the body will make the body miserable and avoid it. We usually divide emotions into negative emotions and positive emotions. Negative is bad, positive is good. But from Darwin's point of view, this is not the difference between good and bad, but the difference between approaching and avoiding. Negative emotions include many kinds, such as anger, guilt, shame and regret, which all imply that we should resist something. Positive emotions include happiness and laughter, which means that we tend to be eager to hug something.

So where are the emotions in our brains? Mainly the limbic system. We can roughly divide the brain into three layers, the innermost is the brain stem, which is responsible for the basic functions of the human body, such as breathing and heartbeat. Wrapped around the brain stem is the limbic system, including hypothalamus and amygdala, which is responsible for the production of emotions. The outermost layer is the cortex, which is buckled on the limbic system like a hat and is responsible for rational thinking such as thinking and logical reasoning.

Generally speaking, reason and emotion are two opposite attributes of the brain. They are contradictory, competitive and mutually exclusive just like oil and water. We often hear the instruction that we should control our emotions and think rationally when making decisions. But in the past 20 years, this view has been challenged. When making a decision, the role of emotions is also essential.

This theory was worked out by a scientist named damasio through experiments. He founded the "body imprint hypothesis" theory, that is, whenever faced with a situation, our body will automatically record whether it produces positive emotions or negative emotions at that time, so that when we encounter the same situation again, we can make a choice to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages. For example, you were bitten by a snake a long time ago, so when you see a snake again, you will hide far away. Once bitten, twice shy.

You know, for centuries, mainstream decision-making theories have thought that decision-making is completely rational and responsible. It holds that emotion and reason are interdependent and indispensable in decision-making. If there is only reason, that person will constantly analyze and compare, but never act. On the contrary, if you only have emotions, you will act blindly and bring great risks. Simply put, if people are compared to cars, then emotions are like fuel, giving people motivation, while rational analysis is like a dashboard, giving people direction. Emotion is the product of evolution. It and reason are complementary and interdependent, and both of them play a key role in our decision-making.

There is a difference between emotions and feelings. Feeling is the external expression of emotion, and emotion is also the product of evolution. It and reason are complementary and interdependent.

Knowing the biological principle, we introduce three specific feelings in turn, and first understand what anger is about.

Anger is essentially a physical function, and it is a way of self-protection developed in the process of evolution to protect ourselves from external harm. Anger is a shell, wrapped in fear, and its function is to guide the body to avoid harm. When we are treated unfairly and feel despised and offended, we will show anger, which may be impulsive, unconscious, short-lived and violent, which is what we usually call anger; It may also be quiet, premeditated, and restrained, which is what we often say. Simply put, anger is an aggressive behavior before or after we are injured.

So what factors are related to anger? The research results are mainly related to genes. Studies have shown that people who are particularly angry and aggressive have genetic problems. In our body, there is a gene called monoamine oxidase A gene, which we call A gene for short. It has two forms. The longer the time, the more enzymes it produces and the higher its activity. Shorter ones produce less enzymes and have low activity, so we call them low activity A genes. If you carry a gene with low activity, the degradation of neurotransmitters in the brain will be slow and inefficient. At this time, a person is more prone to impulsive and aggressive behavior. They nicknamed the inactive A gene "warrior gene".

In the 1990s, this kind of genetic determinism prevailed, as if all violence could be explained by genes. It should be emphasized that not all people with low activity A gene will show violent behavior, and the environmental impact is very critical. If a person, with low activity A gene, is abused since childhood, the probability of his antisocial behavior in adulthood is about 80%, but if he is lucky and grows up in a harmonious family, he will at most show adventurous behavior and will not easily get angry and attack others. So anger and aggression are the result of the interaction between nature and nurture.

Although anger is an act of self-protection, it will hurt the heart and increase the probability of cardiovascular disease, so it is an emotion that needs to be avoided and restrained. Specifically, it can be controlled by proper venting and diverting attention. For example, when you are angry, you can do some intense sports, run fast, boxing and so on. , can reasonably release your destructive power. You can also turn your attention to other places, such as listening to music and chatting, which can effectively avoid the side effects caused by anger. The other way was put forward by Seneca, an ancient Roman philosopher, more than 2000 years ago. He thinks that when you are violated, treating your opponent with contempt can effectively resolve your anger, such as treating your opponent with contempt in your mind and imagining him as a dwarf, so that you can defeat your opponent psychologically. In fact, as we often say, you have no common sense.

Anger is essentially a physical function developed in the process of evolution to protect us from external harm, which is mainly related to genes and also influenced by the environment. We can control anger through a series of methods.

Let's start with anxiety.

Anxiety is a common emotion of modern people. In 20 10, an American report showed that 52% people were unemployed because of economic recession, and 7 1% people felt that they were prone to depression. In Britain, the National Health Service estimates that one in every 20 adults suffers from anxiety disorder. In Europe, the annual investment in coping with anxiety is as high as 77.4 billion euros, which shows that anxiety is a huge health challenge for all countries.

So what is anxiety, and why do people generally fall into anxious mood? The background of anxiety is also fear, but it is not the same as fear. Fear is an immediate response of the body when faced with a specific threat. When we face some concrete things, such as lions, snakes, flying, speeches, etc. Many people will have physical reactions, such as sweating, trembling, listlessness and so on. This set of fear reactions will be reflected in the body within a few seconds, and often faster than our thinking. Simply put, fear has a specific object, while anxiety has no specific object, that is, it is a kind of fear that can't find the reason. It is precisely because there is no specific object that the body is always aware of the danger, so the body will always fall into a slight state of fear, showing slight sweating, trembling and sluggishness.

If we want to ask a person what he is worried about, his answer is usually vague, such as economic crisis, work pressure, interpersonal relationship and so on. And there is usually no specific object. But neuroscientists always have to find out some specific reasons, which can't be found from the outside, but only from a person's inside.

19 At the end of the 20th century, a disease was particularly prevalent in cities, with symptoms including headache, stomach upset and frequent fatigue. At that time, people could not give an exact name to the disease, so a doctor put forward the concept of "neurosis", which contained many nameless mental symptoms. 1952, the American Psychiatric Association felt it necessary to list all kinds of mental diseases in one book, so as to facilitate doctors from all over the world to reach a * * * knowledge, so it published the Handbook of Diagnosis and Statistics of Mental Disorders, which is now considered as a necessary reference book for mental health workers.

In the first edition of this book, neurosis is included. In the third edition, the concept of neurosis was broken and divided into two branches. One is specific phobia, such as social phobia and agoraphobia, and the other is generalized anxiety disorder, which means that if a person feels extremely uncontrollable anxiety for six months in a row, he suffers from generalized anxiety disorder, which is what we often call anxiety disorder. It is worth noting that these symptoms listed by medical institutions are mainly based on clinical diagnosis and differentiation according to observation, and there is no biological basis. This classification is mainly for the convenience of diagnosis, and they cannot accurately describe a person's individual feelings.

From the perspective of neuroscience, although the concepts of fear and anxiety are different, they are in the same position in the anatomical structure of the brain. Anxiety mainly occurs in the amygdala in the brain. As we said before, the amygdala is part of the limbic system. Where is it? You can imagine that one beam of light comes from the eyes and the other from the ears. The place where they cross is the location of the amygdala. It is the core of dealing with emotions, especially the core of fear response. If there is no amygdala, that person will be fearless and unable to perceive emotions.

Through experiments on mice, it is found that anxiety is also in line with the law of conditioned reflex. Just like a dog hearing a bell and then giving it something to eat, after a period of training, the dog will drool if he doesn't eat, and his anxiety will be triggered by a specific event. As we said before, anxiety is the fear of the unknown, but if we return to people, we still can't describe a person's specific feelings. We can't say that when a person is anxious, his hypothalamus is warning of danger. This description has no therapeutic significance for individuals, which is also the limitation of science. So how do you understand the meaning of anxiety? The author turned to philosophy. He was deeply inspired by the German philosopher Heidegger.

Heidegger has his own understanding of anxiety. He divided the way of seeing the world into two kinds, one is a ready-made state and the other is a hands-on state. Ready-made state is a theoretical explanation of the ready-made world, which is actually an attitude that science should adopt. Hands-on state refers to how we interact with the world through various scenes. In fact, it means that we don't think much about theory and know the world with real experience. Heidegger thinks that the latter is actually more important.

Starting from Heidegger's theory, we can also think that the experience of emotion exceeds the theoretical understanding of it. Heidegger thinks that anxiety is of great significance. Our life will be bound by all kinds of trivial things, and we will unconsciously indulge in daily trivial things, and slowly lose our original big goal of finding the meaning of life. Heidegger called this state "falling", so when we lose contact with the goal, anxiety will jump out to save us, which will help us make some unimportant things meaningless and make us rethink what is really important to us. Anxiety is like a strong wind, blowing off a person's redundant decorations and making a person return to the road of finding meaning. When anxiety wakes up, our intimate relationship with the world will disappear. In anxiety, everything will sink, and only what is really important can emerge at this time.

Simply put, anxiety is an opportunity to turn uncertainty into certainty. If you understand its meaning, it will help you know what is really important to you. Anxiety is also related to the future. Heidegger believes that we will not be anxious about what has happened, nor about what will happen, but only about what may happen. With choice, there are more possibilities. In other words, when we are anxious, we just don't know how to choose. So how to avoid anxiety? The answer is no, you can only get rid of it temporarily, such as changing a new environment and diverting your attention, but there is no way to stop it from the source. We need to know its meaning, and living with it is the best choice.

We talked about the meaning of anxiety, which is essentially the fear of uncertainty and the unknown. It comes from our amygdala, which is a positive emotion and can help us return to a meaningful path. We need to live in peace with it and understand its meaning in order to get rid of its troubles.

When it comes to anger and anxiety, they are all negative emotions. Then let's say that the positive is what people have been pursuing: happiness.

It was not until the 1990s that people began to study happiness. Before this, the research on negative emotions accounted for the vast majority, because people are eager to understand the mechanism of negative emotions, so as to avoid and interfere with negative emotions as much as possible. As we said before, in the survival mechanism, positive emotions correspond to closeness and negative emotions correspond to avoidance. This basic principle of seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages is the foundation of ever-changing scientific theory and philosophical theory, and even the pillar of psychoanalysis.

So what does it look like when people are happy? One of the most important features is that you can laugh. But there are many kinds of laughter, such as ridicule and sneer. What kind of smile represents happiness? The first person to study this problem was French doctor Di Sean. He used electrodes to stimulate people's facial muscles, and then told jokes to make people's mouths rise at the same time. Through comparison, it is found that when a smile comes from sincere happiness, the muscles around one's eyes will contract, that is, the eyes will narrow. On the contrary, when a person has to smile, the muscles around his eyes are motionless, so a real smile also has a name called Dickensian smile.

So where does happiness come from? There is a center in the brain that is responsible for happiness, called "reward system". It is an ancient system, which exists not only in human brains, but also in the brains of bees, mice, dogs and elephants. As long as the system works normally, rewarding things such as food and sex will bring satisfaction, and this process will be repeated continuously to promote the survival and reproduction of living things. Some stimuli and behaviors will bring rewards, which makes us want more specific stimuli constantly.

You may think that only positive stimulation can bring happiness, but it is not. Many negative behaviors can also bring happiness. For example, by placing an electrode in the brain of a mouse and directly stimulating the reward circuit with current, the mouse can directly get pleasure. It stands to reason that if the current will bring the feeling of pain, if the reward circuit is not directly stimulated, then the mouse will show avoidance behavior, but the mouse connected with the reward circuit will actively press the lever repeatedly to find the current stimulation, just like taking drugs. Some mice even pressed it hundreds of times. This process is briefly described as follows: after the brain is stimulated, dopamine is released, and then the body produces a feeling of expectation.

Now research has basically confirmed the fact that dopamine does not directly make the body happy, but only makes them feel expected. If they really get what they want, the dopamine content will drop. This also verifies a common fact that we are happy because of expectation.

Is there an area in the brain that corresponds to happiness or sadness? There really is. Neuroscientists have found that the brain is divided into two parts when dealing with emotions, and the left and right hemispheres of the brain deal with different emotions respectively. Some stroke patients with brain injury will show two levels of emotional response, either crying or laughing. People who cry all the time are usually injured in the left brain, while people who laugh all the time are usually injured in the right brain. Why?

As we know, the brain is divided into two hemispheres, which also means that all regions are symmetrical, two cortex, two hippocampus and two amygdala. When we say that a certain area is responsible for an activity, we usually mean a whole, but there are also some special circumstances, such as the handling of emotions. When people think of negative emotions, their eyes usually look to the left. As we know, vision and brain are responsible for processing opposite areas, which means that the right brain is active at this time. or vice versa, Dallas to the auditorium Why is this happening? There is a saying that it helps the brain to make decisions that seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, and the division of labor between left and right is clear and not easy to make mistakes. If you are often confused and show the behavior of seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages when you need to do so, there will be a crisis of survival. Simply put, the left brain is responsible for happiness and the right brain is responsible for sadness. This setting mechanism of the brain may have evolved to reduce wrong emotions.

After talking about the brain's control over happiness, let's talk about the benefits of happiness. Research shows that happiness has at least two benefits. First, it can bring creativity. Dopamine secreted when we are happy can help us concentrate. The reward system is closely connected with the prefrontal cortex, which is the highest part of the brain, a place to think about abstract concepts and a place to store short-term memories. These two places work together and cooperate with each other to promote the generation of good ideas. Research shows that if you show two groups of volunteers some completely unrelated words, let them find out the relationship between these words, such as trees, computers and milk. The first group gave them a chocolate before the test, while the second group gave them nothing. Comparing the two groups of data, we will find that the data of the first group is obviously better than that of the second group. This shows that happiness can strengthen the ability to solve problems.

Secondly, happiness can bring health. Two American researchers selected some people from graduation photo of a private women's university in San Francisco. Who is it? It's the person with a sincere smile in the photo, that is, the person with wrinkles in the corner of our eyes when we laugh. Researchers have followed them for 30 years and found that people who smile sincerely in photos will be more successful in marriage and career, and they will be more satisfied with their work and life. A similar study analyzed smiles in photos of American baseball players from 65438 to 0952, and used them as indicators to predict their life span. The study found that people with real smiles live an average of eight years longer than those with fake smiles. Eight years is not a small number, so we should also pay attention to the meaning of happiness. Some researchers have studied the degree of pain that people can bear when watching movies, and found that comedy viewers can bear pain more than documentary viewers, probably because the release of dopamine increases the critical value of pain. Generally speaking, positive emotions contribute to good health.

Happiness and happiness are usually closely related. Philosophers usually have two basic views on how to obtain happiness and happiness. One is hedonism, and the pursuit of short-lived happiness is essentially the pursuit of the most primitive pleasure. There is also hedonism, which believes that what is worth pursuing is not short-lived enjoyment, but beautiful things such as knowledge, affection, courage and honesty. For a time, these two views were opposite, but now the mainstream view is that happiness and happiness are not contradictory, and it is entirely possible to pursue long-term happiness while frequently obtaining short-term happiness.

To sum up, in this section, we talk about the manifestations and sources of happiness. When people feel happy from the heart, the muscles around their eyes will move, otherwise they will giggle. Happiness mainly comes from the reward system. The left side of the brain is responsible for dealing with positive emotions and the right side is responsible for dealing with negative emotions. Happiness mainly appears in the left brain. Happiness can bring creativity and health.

We can pursue short-term happiness while pursuing long-term happiness.