What Is Emotion?

   

  Although feelings of love, hate, anger, and joy are common responses for most people, emotions have always been thought to be subjective feelings that vary depending on the person. For example, two people engaging in an argument will have different levels of response and may experience different sensations.

     Emotions are a difficult field of study for scientists because their complexity and uniqueness make them nearly impossible to measure. Neuroscientists studying the brain have narrowed down the areas most actived uring an emotional response. Feelings of happiness and pleasure are linked to thep refrontal cortex, while anger, fear, and other negative emotions are linked to the amygdala. Expressive behavior, such as smiling or laughing, is the outward sign of emotion.

     Most people also have physiological responses to emotion, such as turning red, a pounding heart, or adrenaline release. Different chemicals in the brain control the level of emotion a person experiences. At any moment, dozens of neurotransmitters, or chemical messengers, travel through individual cells throughout the entire brain. If a person is in danger, the brain releases stress hormones, flooding certain regions with adrenaline.

   These measurable signs of emotion differ between individuals, however, again suggesting that emotion is subjective. But according to a new study by Cornell neuroscientist Adam Anderson, that is not exactly the case. Two people who have a similar reaction to a sunset share a similar pattern of activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, a region of the prefrontal cortex.“Despite how personal our feelings feel ,the evidence suggests our brains use a standard code to speak the same emotional language,” Anderson explains.

   Whether emotions are objective or subjective, scientists are still not entirely sure why we feel what we feel, or why we express it in particular ways. Anderson calls emotions “the last frontier of neuroscience.” Most people consider emotions a necessary part of being human. They add depth to the human experience. Empathy, in particular, is an important byproduct of emotion.     

     Scientists trace the feeling of empathy to mirror neurons, cells in the brain that fire when we see someone else in a situation that we can imagine ourselves in. People with autism spectrum disorders have difficulty showing empathy, and researchers believe that a better understanding of the physical processes behind emotion can solve these and other psychological disorders.