Scientists intend to create a new science - the neurobiology of emotions

It's a mistake to think that we all react to life's events in a standard way, argue Richard J. Davidson and Sharon Begley, authors of the new book The Emotional Life of Your Brain by Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D., and Sharon Begley, in their article in Newsweek. "Why does one person bounce back quickly from a divorce while another wallows in self-loathing or despair? Why does one person quickly find another job after being fired while his sibling feels like a failure for years?" the authors ask. They believe that science - "the neuroscience of emotion" - will provide the answer.

It all comes down to what Davidson calls an individual's "emotional style." "It is a constellation of emotional reactions and adaptive responses that vary in nature, intensity, and duration," the authors write. In their view, each person's "emotional profile" is as unique as a fingerprint or a face.

Davidson points to the novelty of his approach: "Using brain scanning and other methods, I have traced how emotional style - and the six components that make it up - is related to characteristic patterns of brain activity."

Contrary to scientific "truisms," emotional style is determined, among other things, by the activity of the parts of the brain that are responsible for cognition, thinking, and logic, Davidson believes. Meanwhile, it has traditionally been believed that emotions are something base, animalistic, because they are determined by the activity of parts of the brain that make us related to animals. He makes an important practical conclusion: "You can change your emotional style by systematically exercising your mind."

While conducting experiments on managing people's emotional states, the author discovered that the ability to quickly suppress grief, indignation or other negative emotions is associated with the activity of not the parts of the brain that are considered centers of emotions, but the prefrontal lobe of the brain, which is responsible for thinking. Thus, resistance to negative emotions - one of the 6 elements of emotional style - is associated with more active work of the left part of the prefrontal lobe (if compared with the right part). In an emotionally stable person, the activity of this part can be 30 times higher than its activity in an unstable person.

After other experiments, scientists figured out the mechanism: it turns out that the left part of the prefrontal lobe inhibits the amygdala in the brain - the area where negative emotions usually arise. It also turned out that the more axons in the brain that connect the prefrontal lobe with the amygdala, the easier it is for a person to recover from negative emotions. "Thanks to these two mechanisms, our thinking brain successfully calms our sensitive soul, so that the brain can plan and act without being distracted by negative experiences," the authors conclude.

The authors are also sure that even an adult's brain is plastic, and therefore the above mechanisms can be developed, including through the right thoughts and intentions. An experiment was conducted at Harvard: the subjects simply imagined playing a piece on the piano with their right hand, and after a week the motor cortex responsible for the fingers of the right hand increased in volume. "It is possible to change the structure of nerve cells in your brain," the authors conclude.

They advise getting rid of the traits you are unhappy with through mental exercises: this could be meditation or so-called cognitive behavioral therapy.

Those who are prone to introspection should practice passive, detached observation of thoughts and feelings - the so-called "conscious meditation." The authors consider it one of the most effective means of changing emotional style. It "weakens the chain of associations that forces us to dwell on failure." "As soon as you start mentally going over all the disasters, your mind will help you stop, notice how easy it is for the mind to get distracted, notice that this is an interesting process of activity of the higher nervous system - and the whirlpool will not suck you in," the authors write. They do not promise to turn a hardened pessimist into an optimist, but they assure that it is possible to change emotional style - but the method must be strictly individual.

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