I mean, the way you feel fear, love, hate, jealousy, joy, and they physically seem to reside in the chest, even though current theory has that emotions are electrical impulses in the brain.
IIRC from physiology/neuropsychology…
We actually react hormonally to events, and these hormones cause the feelings we get in our gut/chest… our brains then interpret these to mean fear/happiness/hate etc.
However my knowledge is from 1999 and may be out of date.
The brain controls the body.
If I were to ask you, “How do you feel ‘I have to refuel my car this morning’?”, you’d feel that as an intellectualised response in the brain. It’s a bland , yet complex, concept. You’d probably even perceive it using the words “I… have… to…refuel… my… car… this. .morning”. It’s a higher level construct. Heck, you can even spell it! But how do you spell love, hate, or jealousy? Not the words, the emotions.
The brain and the body are intertwined. Usually, the body relies on the brain to help it out with day-to-day operations. In moments of hightened emotion, the brain calls the favour. Emotions are a hangover from the time when we were much less evolved, and the brain was smaller - a mere"engine management chip" for the body.
OK, I was stimulated to go dig out my notes.
There are a couple of theories about emotion as experienced by the body.
James-Lange theory.
William James, the first major American psychologist, explained emotional experiences using a theory that seemed unlikely when he propsed it in 1890. This explanation still seems to contradict most people’s common sense. The commonsense explanation of emotions probably runs something like this: When you see the 17-legged alien, you experience terror, and this terror sets off physiological reactions (such as a knot in the stomach, sweating palms or an increase in blood pressure).
James (1890) argued, however, that the commonsense explanation places events in the wrong order. If he were watching the science fiction movie with you, he would claim that the perception of an emotion-arousing event (say, a 17-legged alien) directly produces physiological reactions. These physiological reactions send a message to the brain, producing the emotional experience of terror.
James argued that each emotion is signaled by a specific physiological pattern. He particularly emphasised physiological reactions in the abdominal organs (such as a tense feeling, or “knot in the stomach”). In 1887, a Danish physiologist named Carl Lange suggested a similar theory, but he emphasized physiological reactions in the ciruculatory system.
The James-Lange theory of emotion therefore proposes that physiological changes are the source of emotional feelings.
The Cannon-Bard Theory
Several decades later, a physiologist called Walter CAnnon (1927) wrote an article that criticised the James-Lange approach. Cannon argued that physiological changes were too slow to be the sources of emotional feeling. Furthermore, if emotional reactions are produced by physiological sensations, then each emotion should be linked with a unique combination of physiological changes. Cannon and his colleague L.L. Bard proposed their own theory (Bard, 1928; Cannon, 1927). According to the Cannon-Bard theory, an important mediator in emotional experience is the thalamus, a part fo the brain that recieves messages from the sensory receptors. The thalamus, in turn, sends seperate messages to the autonomic nervous system and to the cortex. This would mean that you wouldn’t need to wait for your stomach to churn to know you are terrified. Instead, both events occur at the same time. For several decades the Cannon-Bard theory was more popular than the James-Lange approach.
The Facial Feedback Hypothesis (research from the late '80s) provides support for the James-Lange apporach, although the feedback is thought to be from facial expression, not abdominal change.
Finally: The Schacter-Singer Theory (1962).
According to this theory, an emotion-arousing event causes physiological arousal, and you examine the external environment to help you interpret that event. For example, if your heart is pounding, you try to figure out why. If a 17-legged alien has just appeared on the movie screen, you interpret your arousal as terror. If a very attractive person has just sat down next to you and is gazing lovingly into your eyes, you interpret this arousal very differently.
Cite: This is a summary (and partially direct quotes) from “Psychology” (2000) Matlin MW 3rd Edition Harcourt Brace, Orlando Florida.
This article from Discover has a pretty good rundown of the fear response, as one example of physiological expression of emotion. This is a good companion to phraser’s post.
Wow I thought that they were necessary for our survival at any stage in our evolution. Presumably we end up like Vulcans in your model of evolution.
I think a lot of what’s been written is true, namely if we are feeling emotions in the “chest or gut”, we dont necessarily know what they are, and our subconscious, which was feeling the emotion in the first place, will give rise to these reactions, which our conscious will then be forced to interpret as “love” or “horror”, etc.
However, of course, in some instances, it could be the other way around, if your intellectual brain perceives the threat before your body (a verbal threat, for instance?)
I, however, sometimes experience a different physiological responce. It’s more in my lungs than my heart or gut. You know the feeling you get in your lungs when you have cried and cried and can’t cry any more? Sort of like fluid is building up in your lungs, except without the need to cough? Sometimes I experience that without even crying. I interpret that as a “broken heart.”
I think a lot of what’s been written is true, namely if we are feeling emotions in the “chest or gut”, we dont necessarily know what they are, and our subconscious, which was feeling the emotion in the first place, will give rise to these reactions, which our conscious will then be forced to interpret as “love” or “horror”, etc.
However, of course, in some instances, it could be the other way around, if your intellectual brain perceives the threat before your body (a verbal threat, for instance?)
I, however, sometimes experience a different physiological responce. It’s more in my lungs than my heart or gut. You know the feeling you get in your lungs when you have cried and cried and can’t cry any more? Sort of like fluid is building up in your lungs, except without the need to cough? Sometimes I experience that without even crying. I interpret that as a “broken heart.”