Emotions are mental states produced by neurophysiological changes that are associated in various ways with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and to some extent pleasure or displeasure.
Research into emotions has increased over the past two decades, with contributions from many disciplines, including psychology, medicine, history, the sociology of emotions, and computer science. Numerous theories that attempt to explain the origin, function, and other aspects of emotions have fueled further research on this subject.
Current research areas in the concept of emotion include the development of materials that stimulate and evoke emotions.
In addition, PET and fMRI scans can help examine emotional imagery processes in the brain. From a mechanical point of view, emotions can be defined as “positive or negative experiences associated with specific patterns of physiological activity”.
Emotions trigger a variety of physiological, behavioral, and cognitive changes. The original role of emotion was to motivate adaptive behaviors that in the past would have contributed to gene transmission through survival, reproduction, and selection from kin. Emotions are complicated. There are various theories as to whether emotions can change our behavior. On the one hand, the physiology of emotion is closely related to the arousal of the nervous system. Emotions are also associated with behavioral tendencies. Extroverts tend to be social and express their emotions, while introverts tend to be socially withdrawn and hide their feelings. Emotions are often the driving force behind motivation. Emotions, on the other hand, are not causal relationships, but merely syndromes of factors such as motivations, emotions, behaviors, and physiological changes, none of which are emotions. Emotions are also not the entities that cause these components.
FEAR AND ANXIETY
Fear is an adaptive emotional response that makes us flee from danger. Anxiety is an inhibitory emotion that leads to an excessive and unfocused fear response, leading to avoidance and action paralysis. The deactivation of the lower limbs in the anxiety map may point to this inhibitory response.
HAPPINESS AND LOVE
Being in love is usually associated with emotions of joy and happiness. However, love may also be associated with feelings of sadness and anxiety which are not revealed through this study. I assume it is because love is complex and cannot be clearly mapped out because the emotions it consists of exist indepent of one another.
DEPRESSION AND SADNESS
Sadness is a normal human emotion that people feel as a reaction to situations that are upsetting, painful, or humiliating. Depression is a mental health condition that negatively impacts our mood, our self image, our ability to do daily activities, and how we view the world around us.
ANGER AND DISGUST
I found it interesting how similar anger and disgust are in terms of mapping. However, anger has more activation in the upper body and hands. Anger leads to the impulse of directly responding to the person who wronged you whereas when we feel disgust, we usually want to take indirect action (such as moving away or talking about the person to others).
Most of the basic emotions were associated with a sensation of increased activity in the upper chest, possibly corresponding to changes in breathing and heart rate.
Similarly, sensations in the head region are shared by all emotions, presumably due to physiological changes in the facial region (i.e., facial muscle activation, skin temperature, lacrimation) and emotional events triggered by emotional events. It reflects both perceived changes in content. Upper extremity sensations were most prominent in proximity-oriented emotions, anger, and happiness, while sensations of reduced extremity activity were a distinct feature of sadness. These results thus support a model that posits that the somatosensory system and embodiment play a key role in emotion processing. Decoding subjective body sensations associated with human emotions may help us better understand mood disorders such as depression and anxiety that are associated with altered emotional processing.