I'm neuroscientist and psychologist Richard Davidson let's answer your questions from the internet this is emotions [Music] support at polaro 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 Wendy 06 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 will find these slight differences where women may be more sensitive to emotional cues than men in certain context 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 differen is really a little bit misplaced at Riri Yi 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 at alpaca aurelus holy crap Botox impairs your ability to process other people's emotions because it PR vents 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 Expressions 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 at Adam Fair 1996 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 going to be a single molecule associated with a specific disease or specific emotion is absolutely a myth Andrea labuy MD asks are autistic individuals hypers sensitive 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 hypers sensitive in in general this would include being hyp sensitive 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 at no KY Kathleen 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 fed back to the brain so our gut feelings are real and there's information that occurs there that's going to 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 at AR asaurus 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 hardn 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 Ive methods of medication at Kurt J gray 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 outg group 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 outg group 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 uh we don't have that feedback so I think there is some danger in um becoming overly expressive in perhaps inappropriate ways interacting with people online at Emily Aku asks this 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 at Paul emman 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 science scientist of emotion Robert pluch and pluch argues that there are a number of primary emotions such as Joy trust fear surprise and their 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 surrender may be thought of as a low 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 dichot in that way less binary as someone who has spent quite a bit of time with the doy Lama in research that we've done the Dal llama 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 nonwestern 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 well-being and emotions that are UNH wholesome so for example anger is an emotion that would be considered in an UNH wholesome emotion in these other Frameworks curious ear curiouser 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 want to 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 at iwig doll how does meditation rewire the brain when we cultivate wholesome habits of mind through meditation it turns out that our brains live 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 at Elon conomy 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 nonpharmacological 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 knew the possibility of contemplative aerobics please try it at the girl Z asks where are my emotions why can't I feel anything I want to feel people sometimes report that they don't feel their emotions and they 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 Alexia 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 and 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 at reformer uum asks a series of questions what is emotional maturity how can it be measured is emotional maturity connected 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 hardn ways in the brain that involve looking at the interaction between the prefrontal cortex and the amydala as well as behaviorally to see how this is expressed in the real world in our everyday Behavior at G Monster 7000 ask 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 uh 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' have had damage to their right hemisphere where they 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 frontal region of the brain may be associated with certain kinds of positive emotion that laughter is associated with at X ysh Hearts 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 m Madness the prefrontal cortex which is here is definitely going to 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-re ulate the prefrontal cortex also confers the possibility of disregulation psychiatric problems are far more prevalent in humans than they are in any other species and that is because of the prefrontal cortex at carop 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 doy Lama in 1992 I made a commitment to 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 going to 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 [Music]
2024-10-09