What are emotions? How do we feel them? How do we express them? Why do we need emotions from both a social and biological standpoint? Why might we need the following emotions: Fear and Anger.
“Emotions are not what we think they are, they are not universally expressed and recognized. They are not hard-wired brain reactions that are uncontrollable.” What emotions are from a biological standpoint are guesses that the brain constructs in that particular moment where billions of brain cells are working together. We have total control over our emotions more than we might think. Lisa Feldman Barrett demonstrated an experiment during her Ted Talk that showed a very interesting way of how we interpret emotions. During her presentation she showed an image that looked like it had random black and white stripes. When first looking at the image your brain doesn’t know what the image is showing. When you continue to look at the photo, your brain tries to make out what it could be from your past experiences. When you try to figure out what the image is, you are in a state known as “experiential blindness.” This is when you find an image that doesn’t represent a singular object and your brain tries to make out what it could be from your past experiences. She then showed an image of a snake with black and yellow stripes. When she flipped to the black and white image, you were able to see that same snake in the previous photo. This is because your brain now has the knowledge from the previous photograph, which is changing how you experience that one photo. This is very similar to how we interpret emotions. From a young age we use certain expressions that display what emotions we are currently feeling in that moment. When we see someone smile, we assume they are happy. When someone has tense eyebrows, we assume they are angry. We all have this collective assumption of how emotions are portrayed, but not one single emotion is inherited. “Emotions are not built into your brain, they are just built.” How emotions work is that our brain predicts how we are going to react to the outside world. Physical movements that we have built into our brain are how we determine what emotion we feel. Even though physical movements have no meaning set in stone, we are the ones who determine what those movements mean. An example that was used was when we have a fast beating heart. When you feel your heart beating fast, you correlate that sensation to being nervous or having anxiety. We made those movements have a specific meaning to where we can understand what emotions we are feeling in that specific moment. Since we have these emotions determined by a physical representation, we judge others by what emotions they show. We detect other peoples emotion based on what is inside our own head. If you were completely isolated and had different ways of displaying your emotion, you could have a whole new perspective on what other people’s emotions could be saying. A smile to us means happy while it could mean disgust to them. Emotions don’t have one physical aspect that can recognize what that emotion is, because these sensations are constructed by us, you never know what other people are actually emoting. Fear and anger are two emotions that correspond to one another. We find fear is some of the things that make us the most angry. Anger is an emotion that comes out when we have built tension that we haven’t been able to express. Fear is an emotion that causes us to feel worried and constantly on edge. Our brain predicts some of the worst outcomes which causes us to constantly fear those predictions. Anger and fear can both be built off of other emotions. Anger can stem from jealousy, while people fear to experience other emotions such as sadness. Anger and fear are two emotions that have a big influence on how our brain will predict what we experience.
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When we talk about the world being a "hallucination" that you create in your mind, how do you feel? Do you believe the world as you perceive it to be as it really is?
A quote that stood out to me from watching a Ted Talk this week was,” Hallucination is uncontrolled perception and perception is controlled hallucination.” I find it very interesting that the point he is trying to make is hallucination is just our view and perception being uncontrolled, but how we view reality is just a hallucination that we control and manage. When I think about the world just being a hallucination, it confuses my mind because it makes me rethink my life and how everything I know could potentially be fake. I have talked about this a lot with my family and friends and I do think this could be true because it seems like a strong possibility. If you could enhance one sense, what would it be and why? If I could enhance one of my senses, I would enhance my sense of touch. I think enhancing my sense of touch would be really interesting because you would be able to feel more texture to objects. The only concern I thought about would be that I would become super sensitive to everything I touch. Having a enhances touch would be interesting to see if things I thought were smooth actually have a rough texture or things that have a rougher edge have a certain grit to them. What was your best learning moment in the past two weeks? Any "wow" moments? From the past two weeks, something that I was really intrigued by was how everyone’s perception of reality is different from the person sitting next to them. Also how one person sees green, could be what you see as red. I think that everyone’s point of view on their reality could be the complete opposite of how their mom sees it or how their friends see it. We will never know if we all live and see the same reality or if we are just making it up. What do you think is the nature of the connection of mind and body? I think that the connection between the mind and body is both very simple and complex. The mind and body send the signals to one another to tell each what to do. In a more complex matter, the body’s bacteria affects the person’s mental state. Last semester I presented a presentation on how the bacteria in your gut affects your state of mind. A lot of the bacteria found in the gut could lead to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. The gut and the brain connect through the gut brain axis. Overall, the mind and body have several ways in connecting with one another. |
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