We may all be familiar with the butterflies flying in our stomach when we are head over heels in love. The heart beats faster, the autonomous nervous system signals excitement and increases oxygen to our muscles, the neuroendocrine system is boosted up; being elevated from head to toe, the body feels lighter and on an instant we can take flight. This is how neuroscientists describe the state of “limbic love.”
Emotions are activated in the limbic system of the brain and they coordinate our behavior and physiological states even though we are not always consciously aware of them. The link between emotions and bodily states is also reflected in the way we speak of emotions : we may have “cold feet” to go to work when snowed under; confronted with a severe disappointment, we may be “heartbroken,” or remembrance of a long past memory may send “a shiver down our spine.”
To explore the link between the emotions and the body, a team of neuroscientists, psychologists and biomedical engineers in Finland made a unique experiment which was published by the National Academy of Sciences. They asked a sample of 700 people from Western Europe and East Asia to map out where they felt different emotions on their bodies. They found surprisingly consistent results even across cultures.
The team showed the participants blank silhouettes of a person on a screen and told them to name the predominant emotion they felt in each given scenario. They could choose from a list of 14 emotions including love, anger, disgust, fear, etc. The participants then painted areas of the body that felt stimulated by that emotion.
To avoid stereotyped answers, the researchers used two of the most powerful emotion inducing techniques –guided imagery based on reading short stories and viewing of movies, and the participants were asked to report their bodily sensations online during the emotion induction.
They found that different emotions are consistently associated with different parts of the body across West European and East Asian samples, and they are represented on the somatosensory system in a universal manner.
“People find the experiment quite amusing,” recounts Lauri Nummenmaa, the psychologist who led the study.
Despite the individual differences in the way the emotions were painted, similar patterns emerged for each emotion. People reported that the most positive emotions – happiness and love sparked high activity in the whole body, whereas depression generated the opposite effect : it wiped out feelings in the arms, legs and head. Fear triggered strong sensations in the chest area. Anger was one of the few emotions that activated the arms and the feet.
In the past decade, numerous studies have found bodily markers of mood disorders, Nummenmaa says :
For instance, with depression sometimes people have pain in their chest. Emotions are expressed one way or another in the body… We know now that when we change our body language – like our posture –we can alter our mind.
“Monitoring the topography of emotion-triggered bodily sensations brings forth a unique tool for emotion research, and could provide a biomarker for mood and psychosomatic disorders,” suggest the researchers.
The ability to be aware and recognize the currents of emotions as they occur is essential for self-regulation and for being resilient faced with challenges of life. It is also the epitome of emotional intelligence as Daniel Goleman said :
Emotional awareness and curbing impulsiveness is a fundamental psychological skill and the keystone of emotional intelligence…it underlies accomplishment of every sort.
Duygu Bruce
