So, what is the "emotional mechanism" of people? What is the relationship between our human "heart" and "brain"? We know that for a long time, scientists all over the world have been trying to uncover the mystery of the human brain, but few scientists are studying "emotion", which is the part that people usually think is in charge of "heart", because it is difficult to grasp "emotion" objectively. Recently, however, scientists have found that emotional changes have a great influence on brain function. At present, scientists are speeding up research in this field. This paper attempts to summarize and introduce some latest research results in this field and explore the mystery of human emotion.
Feelings can be divided into "animal feelings" and "human-specific feelings"
Xiao Ye Wunian, a Japanese expert on "feelings" and a doctor at Toyama Medical University, believes that feelings can be divided into two parts. Part of it is the feeling of animals, such as the happy feeling when instinctive desires such as appetite and sexual desire are satisfied, and the unhappy feeling when these things are not satisfied. The other part is the unique feelings of human beings, mainly referring to feelings such as respect, contempt, love and hate. Scientists generally call the feelings of animals "sports". Today, although medical instruments have been developed to diagnose and scan the brain, it is still impossible to do emotional experiments directly with the human brain, so we have to turn to animals for help. Of course, scientists can't say hello to animals directly: "How do you feel today?" Only by observing the behavior of animals can we understand the relationship between their emotions and their brains. For example, in order to survive, monkeys will feel happy when they find their favorite food, but they will feel fear and escape when they find animals such as lions, snakes and spiders. However, American neuroscientists Kruff and Bush found through experiments that if the tonsils in the brains of monkeys and cats are destroyed, they can't distinguish what food can be eaten and what food can't be eaten. They are no longer afraid of what used to keep them silent. This tells people that the limbic system of the brain, including tonsils, may be responsible for emotional processing.
Human emotional disorder originates from brain injury.
The brain is mainly composed of neurons (nerve cells). It is said that there are as many as 100 100 billion nerve cells. Each neuron is composed of cell body, dendrites and axons, which form synapses and extend to other neurons, and transmit information to distant neurons by transmitting electrical signals. In the process of transmitting signals, many chemicals called neurotransmitters will be released, and dopamine, which can cause human emotional changes, is one of them. If people take morphine, they will feel "happy" because dopamine in the brain plays a role.
Canadian scientist James and his students once did a famous experiment. They inserted an electrode into a mouse's brain and asked the mouse to press a switch by itself, thus producing a sense of pleasure in the mouse's brain. Unexpectedly, this mouse never eats, drinks, sleeps or even makes love. It just pressed the switch desperately until it was exhausted. Therefore, scientists believe that there is a phenomenon of "forgetting to eat and sleep" and obsession with something (such as gambling) in human beings, and we can get some enlightenment from the mouse experiment, which may be because the human brain is constantly stimulated by some kind of stimulation and produces pleasure. At this time, dopamine will be released in large quantities.
Scientists have also found through experiments that the tonsils of the human brain are damaged and emotional disorders will occur. For example, there is a disease called Ubah-Witty disease, and people with this disease can't judge other people's expressions. Most of us usually stay away from angry people so as not to get ourselves into trouble. However, patients with Ubah-Witty syndrome can't understand the expression on the angry person's face, but they will still casually approach the angry person and get involved in the dispute. It can be seen that if the tonsils are damaged. Humans have lost their judgment of what they like or dislike. This also proves that some emotional disorders of human beings are inevitably accompanied by physiological changes in the brain.
If you can't control your emotions well, it will cause physical trauma.
Each of us will encounter a lot of pressure in our life and work. Proper stress can make us more energetic and enterprising. But if the mental stress is too great to bear, there will be physical problems. In the words of psychologists, it is the physiological manifestation of psychological problems.
Our body has the ability to keep the balance of the internal environment, such as pulse and blood pressure are usually kept constant. If our blood pressure suddenly rises, our heart beats faster or is unstable, it means that we are in a state of tension. Events that cause stress are called stressors. When a person is infected with germs and viruses, the balance in the body is disturbed, which will also make people in a state of tension. Through research, scientists believe that there are two ways for the human body to respond to stress, one is to trigger changes through hormones in the blood, and the other is to play a role through the autonomic nervous system. If the information of feeling pressure is processed by the cerebral cortex and transmitted to the hypothalamus through the tonsils, the hypothalamus will issue instructions to activate the autonomic nervous system and secrete hormones. Hormones related to stress are called "stress hormones", and glucocorticoids are one kind of stress hormones. This hormone acts on the liver, muscles and other places, which increases the sugar in the human blood (the energy source of the human body) and makes us ready to fight or escape. Once the autonomic nerve is activated, it will directly act on the heart and blood vessels, making the heart beat faster, blood vessels contract and blood pressure rise; At the same time, gastrointestinal blood flow decreases, peristalsis slows down, appetite deteriorates, and gastric juice increases, which can cause gastric ulcer in severe cases. That's why we often hear people say that when they are angry, they will have "heartburn" (stomach pain). Professionals point out that if you encounter unpleasant things or pressures, you can consciously ease your emotions, maintain a good attitude, and avoid or reduce harm to your body.
Why does everyone suffer from different degrees of pressure?
Not all people will have stress disorder (that is, physical and mental trauma and injury) when they encounter strong pressure. Researchers from the Medical College of Yamanashi University in Japan investigated people with stress disorder, and found that many of these patients were abused and hit when they were young. The upbringing environment has a great influence on the physiological characteristics of a person's brain under stress. The researchers compared the differences of hippocampus between "mice growing up under the care of their mothers" and "mice not growing up under the care of their mothers", and put some pressure on them at the same time during the maturity of the two groups of mice. The results show that the number of hippocampal neurons in the latter is significantly less than that in the former, and the hippocampus itself is smaller. Scientists believe that a person who suffered great stress in childhood is prone to stress disorder in adulthood. As early as 1950s and 1960s, German psychologist Criz Mo put forward the hypothesis that "personality and physique are related to mental illness". Now, scientific research has gone further and found that people's personality is related to the material balance in the brain. Therefore, how to cultivate a healthy brain has become a topic of concern to scientists, and it is also a pursuit of health by contemporary people.
Since 1980, the study of emotions has gradually turned to molecular biology. People gradually realize that not only different parts of the brain are related to different emotions, but also many substances, such as serotonin, dopamine, adrenaline, catecholamine, etc., affect brain activities and people's emotions. These findings have aroused great concern of researchers, and are currently being studied emphatically, trying to find out how this series of chemical changes are produced and how knowledge, feeling and consciousness are processed in the brain. Scientists realize that treating "heart disease" is the mission of brain science. Up to now, human psychological diseases have become more and more serious, such as stress disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and so on. But modern science has not yet found out the real causes of these diseases. But medicine tells us that because these diseases have changed the human body materially, once you suffer from such diseases, you must see a doctor and treat them with drugs if necessary. "Heart disease" is actually "encephalopathy". If "heart disease" is really treated as a disease, it will greatly alleviate the suffering of patients and try to avoid more serious consequences.
At present, the biggest difference between human brain and computer is whether there is emotion or not. Robots can process all kinds of information like people, but they are indifferent to value judgment. The human brain is good at this. From this perspective, once the emotional mechanism of the brain is deciphered, it will bring revolutionary influence to the information society.
Be kind to your heart, pay attention to your brain, cultivate positive emotions and face pressure scientifically, and you will become a happy person.