• Question: Good evening fellow scientists, i was just a moment ago pondering over a mindboggling question that has been puzzling me. - what in the human body/brain triggers emotions and how does it work?

    Asked by joeytribbiani to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 29 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Andrew Thomas

      Andrew Thomas answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      Good question joey but I don’t know the answer to this one. Perhaps our biologists can help. I do know that our emotions can change the chemicals in our brain and that chemical imbalances in our brain can lead to depression but that’s about the limit of my knowledge

      Sorry!

    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      It seems a shame to reduce emotions to chemical but essentially, that’s what were all made of!

      Mood is primary controlled by the limbic system in our brain which is comprised mainly of the amygdala (latin for ‘the almond shaped bit’), the hippocampus (latin for ‘the seahorse’) and the hypothalamus (latin for ‘the bit under the bedroom’ – yes, that’s right).

      The amygdala is active when we think of or make emotionally charged memories, and it’s neighbour, the hippocampus is involved in long term memory storage. The hypothamalus is like a messenger between those two parts and the pituitary gland, which is responsible for triggering hormonal responses. On a basal level, tit was thoght that the amygdala could trigger fear and anxiety responses though the way that we interpreted situations according to what was stored in the hippocampus by sending messages to the hypothalamus, modulating the amount fo stress hormone or ‘cortisol’ in the body.

      We know know that emotions are more subtle than that and that happiness and sadness are controlled by two separate brain loops (so you can be happy and sad at the same time, like if you’re sad to see someone leave, but happy to know someone else is coming – it’s bittersweet)

      The different activations of these loops and the relative amounts of the chemicals they make including dopamine, 5-hydroxytryptamine and GABA, are what we conciously interpret as our mood. Altering the chemicals either by injury, illness or drug use can cause a change in emotional state

      If you’ll like to know more,or if this isn’t very clear, just comment and I’ll try to explain better! Emotion is a very hard one to investigate – mood is all personal interpretation- we’re still learning about it now!

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      There are emotional centers in the brain that, as SJ says, work via chemical and electrical signals that produce the different emotions in you. But your brain also has higher brain functions that process these emotions… base emotions like fear and joy are supplemented by higher emotions like guilt and self-reflection by higher brain processes that occur in humans but not in many other animals.

      I think that there are still some parts of emotions and especially consciousness that brain reserachers can’t explain. Free will and conscious, some researchers say, may actually be produced by quantum mechanics, because quantum mechanics bring in uncertainties and complex behaviors of particles that might explain how we can have so many different emotions at once, how we can have the free will to choose between different emotional states, and how we can all be so different from one another emotionally even though all humans have basically the same DNA!

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