Neuroscientist Answers Emotion Questions

I'm neuroscientist and psychologist Richard Davidson.

Let's answer your questions from the internet.

This is Emotion Support.

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@paularau asks, Stress will shrink your brain? Really?

Yes, really.

The data here are quite clear.

Stress does have effects on the brain,

and it can shrink the brain,

and it shrinks the area

that grows new brain cells, the hippocampus.

@wendystella06 asks,

Are women really more sensitive and emotional

than men in general?

If you take thousands of men and thousands of women

and you compare them, you'll find these slight differences

where women may be more sensitive

to emotional cues than men.

In certain contexts,

they may be more expressive of emotion than men,

but the variation within gender

far exceeds the variation between gender.

And so in my view,

focusing on these gender differences is really

a little bit misplaced.

@ryiryiryi_ Why do we even have feelings?

Feelings and emotions are found

throughout evolutionary history.

They're not just found in humans.

In the case of an animal

who may be confronted by a predator,

the experience of fear will motivate the animal

to run or to fight.

We have feelings to navigate important life decisions.

They are really critical in enabling us

to make important decisions.

For example, should we be with a significant other?

Should we take one job versus another job?

Those are not decisions that we make

based on a simple, cold cognitive calculus.

We use our emotions, our feelings to decide.

@AlpacaAurelius, Holy crap.

Botox impairs your ability

to process other people's emotions

because it prevents your face

from mirroring someone's reaction.

Botox is truly soul sucking.

Botox does effectively paralyze your facial muscles.

And one of the things that we've learned

over the last 20 years in research on emotion

is that not only does the brain control the face

to produce emotional expressions,

but emotional expressions feed back information to the brain

to help the brain modulate its activity.

When we are interacting with another person,

we often engage in contagious emotional expression.

So we are simulating the emotions

that another person may experience.

This is part of empathy,

and if we can't do that because of Botox,

we are literally deprived of a major mechanism

through which we can make inferences

about both our own emotion

as well as another person's emotion.

@AdamFare1996 says, Chemical imbalance is a myth!

But is it really?

Studies done have shown that a serotonin imbalance

may not be the real cause of depression,

but that's just one chemical.

The body is made up of chemicals,

so unless you've researched them all,

you can't make that initial statement.

It is true that serotonin is just one chemical,

and even though drugs

to treat depression primarily act on serotonin,

it doesn't mean that serotonin is the cause,

nor does it mean

that it's the most important chemical

involved in depression.

In fact, it's likely that the serotonin

just triggers a whole chemical cascade

unleashed by taking this drug.

And so the cause of the depression

and the cause of the improvement in depression

goes way beyond serotonin.

We are still discovering many new chemicals

in the brain and the body.

We are living in this chemical soup that is highly complex.

The idea that there is gonna be

a single molecule associated with a specific disease

or specific emotion is absolutely a myth.

@Andrea_Libutti_MD asks,

Are autistic individuals hypersensitive to emotions?

It depends because autism is not a homogeneous category.

It's quite heterogeneous.

There are different subtypes of autism,

and there are some subgroups of autism

that are hypersensitive, in general.

This would include being hypersensitive to emotion.

One of the things that we see in a subgroup

of autistic individuals is that they show gaze aversion.

They don't look directly at a person's face

because they're so sensitive to emotion,

and it's so arousing for them to watch another person's face

that they have to actually turn away.

And this gaze aversion starts very early in life.

It's one of the first symptoms of autism

that expresses itself.

@nokizzykathleen,

You ever get that sad feeling in your tummy?

Like you're okay, but your tummy is like,

no, you're really not.

There are 200 million neurons in the gut.

Stuff that goes on in the brain

is communicated to the tummy,

and stuff that goes on in the tummy

is feed back to the brain.

So our gut feelings are real,

and there's information that occurs there

that's gonna be modulating activity in the brain.

And this is all part of the mandala of emotion.

It's important that we consider emotions to be embodied

and to involve all of these different bodily systems.

@ayrasaurus says,

I need my brain chemistry literally altered.

Like is there drugs that can be ingested

so that our brain physically can process emotions?

We know that there are medications available

to change the brain.

These medications are used to treat people

with various kinds of emotional disorders

like depression and anxiety.

So there are these drugs which do affect brain chemistry,

and they are sometimes really important to use

if they're used judiciously.

However, in my view,

we are medicating people too readily in our society.

We have too low a threshold

for administering these medications.

They often have lots of side effects,

and we know that there are ways to change

the brain that don't require medication.

We can actually change our brains

by intentionally cultivating our minds.

Meditation is one such way, but there are others.

For example, we know from hard-nosed scientific research

that cognitive therapy can change the brain.

Cognitive therapy is an empirically well-validated strategy

to treat depression and anxiety.

And it involves teaching people

to think differently about their thoughts.

We should at least try these non-invasive methods first

before we try the more invasive methods of medication.

@kurtjgray asked,

Does the internet make us more empathic

and emotionally intelligent or less?

I would say that the preponderance of the evidence suggests

that the internet makes us less emotionally empathic,

particularly for members of the outgroup,

because one of the things that we find in the internet

is that we're fed information that is consistent

with our ideology and with our beliefs.

And this is leading us to become more polarized.

And this may make us empathic for our ingroup,

but it's certainly not making us more empathic

for members of our outgroup.

When we interact with people virtually

and are deprived of the immediate feedback

of their physical presence, their facial expression,

we often will be less inhibited, less constrained

because we don't have that feedback.

So I think there is some danger

in becoming overly expressive

in perhaps inappropriate ways

interacting with people online.

@emily_aku asks, Is cringe an emotion?

Cringe is an expression, a facial expression.

it may be a vocal expression,

and it probably has several different emotions

that are melded together.

It may be a little bit of disgust, a little bit of contempt,

a little bit of anger, a little bit of sadness.

It could be a a conglomeration of these negative emotions.

It's a complex emotion.

We can think of it in that way,

but the actual cringe itself is

an expression displayed in response to someone,

for example, making a terrible and inappropriate joke

in the wrong setting.

@PaulEkman, who's a very famous emotion scientist,

a very dear friend of mine and a collaborator asks,

How many emotions are there?

We have here a scheme developed

by another well-known scientist of emotion, Robert Plutchik.

And Plutchik argues that there are

a number of primary emotions

such as joy, trust, fear, surprise,

and there are opposites

that are sadness, disgust, anger, anticipation.

We have this circumplex

and the outer ring are emotions

that are less arousing.

And as we get closer and closer to the center,

the emotions are more arousing.

We begin with serenity.

It may be thought of as a lower arousal, positive emotion.

Then joy and then ecstasy.

Ecstasy would be a higher arousal positive emotion.

And similarly, we can go from apprehension, in this case,

to fear to terror.

According to this scheme, there are emotions

that are opposite to one another.

For example, joy and sadness are opposite to one another.

According to other scientists, however,

emotions may be less dichotomous in that way, less binary.

As someone who has spent

quite a bit of time with the Dalai Lama.

In research that we've done,

the Dalai Lama I know has expressed serenity

along with sadness simultaneously.

And so the idea that these are always opposite in this way

I think is a little too simplistic.

These are all Western conceptions of emotion.

In non-Western cultures,

the framework for emotion is likely to be quite different.

And so it's important that we not consider this a final say

on how emotions should be parsed.

In some non-Western cultures, a major division is made

between emotions that are wholesome,

that are conducive to our wellbeing,

and emotions that are unwholesome.

So, for example, anger is an emotion

that would be considered an unwholesome emotion

in these other frameworks.

@CuriousearnCuriouser asks, Why is smiling contagious?

Smiling is contagious,

and it really invites the question

about emotions being contagious more generally.

Research has been done starting in neonates

just after they're born

when they're in the nursing unit in a hospital.

When one baby begins to cry,

the other babies start to cry too.

That is a form of emotional contagion.

It begins that early when really when we're first born.

And so we are wired to respond to the emotions of others.

This is a very helpful insight because there are times

when we may wanna change the mood in a meeting

or in a room by laughing, for example, or smiling.

We can have it spread to the other members of this group.

@IWikdal, How does meditation rewire the brain?

When we cultivate wholesome habits

of mind through meditation,

it turns out that our brains literally change.

Meditation changes two major systems in the brain.

It changes our capacity to pay attention.

The prefrontal cortex is majorly involved

because this is the area of self-regulation,

and this area is strengthened by meditation.

The second change that occurs in the brain

with meditation is focused on emotion.

And meditation improves our ability

to regulate our emotions,

particularly in changing the connectivity

among different networks in the brain.

Most of the time our self-related thinking,

our beliefs about ourselves

really hijack our perception of reality.

And what meditation does is it alters that.

It shifts our connectivity

so that we can see that our thoughts about ourselves,

our beliefs, our expectations are there,

but we can appreciate them for what they are.

So this is how meditation affects the wiring in our brain.

@elonconomy asks, I need to get smarter.

Anyone have any hacks for IQ

or any activities they can do to increase neuroplasticity?

The single best way that's non-pharmacological and safe

is something that may be surprising to viewers,

and that is aerobic exercise.

Neuroplasticity is a word we use to refer

to the fact that the brain can change

in response to experience or to training.

And it includes many different mechanisms,

forming new connections,

decreasing connections, kind of sculpting the brain.

There are also new neurons that actually can grow,

a process that we call neurogenesis.

The real question is

how can we combine an increase in neuroplasticity

with training the mind to improve our emotions?

And there I think a combination

of physical exercise and meditation

is perhaps an ideal combination.

Let me introduce something

that I think is really totally new,

the possibility of contemplative aerobics.

Please try it.

@theegirlzee_ asks, Where are my emotions?

Why can't I feel anything?

I wanna feel.

People sometimes report that they don't feel their emotions,

and that could be due to many different reasons.

They may be having emotions

that they're not experiencing consciously.

It also may be

that they're simply not having those emotions.

The former we refer to as alexithymia

where a person is having difficulty labeling

or naming or becoming aware of emotions that they have.

The latter case is more like psychopathy.

There are big differences among people

in the extent to which they feel their emotions.

We talked about the fact that when we have emotions,

we don't always consciously feel them.

One thing that you can try is to simply sit quietly.

When you have an emotion,

bring your awareness into your body

and you can scan your body starting at the head

and going down through all the different parts of your body,

going into the face, into your neck,

into your shoulders, into your torso,

and simply bring awareness to these different parts

of the body on a regular basis

and see if that can help to connect you

to the emotions that you feel.

@ReformerOlusseun asks a series of questions.

What is emotional maturity?

How can it be measured?

Is emotional maturity connected to age?

What age can we be emotionally matured?

How is it objective

and what makes it beyond a mere opinion?

Emotional maturity is probably most akin

to showing high levels of emotional intelligence.

And emotional intelligence includes

the capacity to effectively regulate our emotions

and also the capacity to be aware of our own emotions,

to be self-aware.

There are simple forms of meditation

that we know can improve a person's emotional maturity

or their emotional intelligence.

There are ways to measure this,

including really hard-nosed ways in the brain

that involve looking at the interaction

between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala,

as well as behaviorally to see

how this is expressed in the real world

in our everyday behavior.

@GMonster7000 asks, Wait, what goes on in our brains

when we laugh?

Are our neurons laughing too?

Laughing might serve as a kind of emotional reset.

It's a big change that can occur,

and in a very quick way, reset our neural circuits.

There are some cool insights

that we've gleaned about laughter

from the study of neuroscience, and in particular,

from the study of patients who've had damage

to one part of their brain or another.

It turns out that people

who've had damage to their right hemisphere

where their left hemisphere is preserved,

are more likely to laugh.

So the area of the brain

that is preserved is the one that's laughing.

And so when the right side is damaged,

it may disinhibit the left side of the brain

so it becomes more active.

That's been called

in the scientific literature pathological laughter.

They laugh at things that most of us

would probably not laugh at.

And this has given us some insight

that the left hemisphere of the brain,

particularly the left frontal region of the brain,

may be associated with certain kinds of positive emotion

that laughter is associated with.

@xyshearts wants to know, Why am I so mad?

Madness or anger is typically triggered

by something outside of us,

a systemic injustice, our goals being thwarted.

That is perceived in the brain.

If we are really mad,

and we're trying to regulate that madness,

the prefrontal cortex, which is here,

is definitely gonna be involved.

It is involved in self-regulation,

including the regulation of emotion.

It is larger in humans than it is in any other species,

and this is likely associated with the fact

that humans can self-regulate in ways

that are far more sophisticated than in any other species.

But there's one downside to that.

In addition to the capacity to self-regulate,

the prefrontal cortex also confers

the possibility of dysregulation.

Psychiatric problems are far more prevalent in humans

than they are in any other species,

and that is because of the prefrontal cortex.

@kawsarpls asks, I always wonder what love actually is.

Is love a gesture?

Is it a feeling?

Is it an emotion?

Is it a combination of all three?

Many years ago when I first met the Dalai Lama in 1992,

I made a commitment to him that I would put compassion

on the scientific map as best I could.

And I think over the last 20 years,

the field has really been quite successful in that.

I would now like to do the same thing for love.

There is very little serious research on love.

We do know that love includes areas of the brain

that we typically think of as being involved in emotion.

Clearly, love involves going beyond oneself,

a dissolution, at least in part of self/other boundaries.

Exactly how this occurs in a scientific

or biological framework is very difficult

to specify at this point in time.

It's gonna involve changes in connectivity

between the default mode of the brain and other circuits,

particularly circuits involved in positive emotion.

So those are all the questions for today.

Really great questions.

Thank you so much,

and thank you for watching Emotion Support.

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