Day Three: Emotions, Moods, And Feelings

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d
Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.

“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
“I cannot look on thee.”

Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”
“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.

This first stanza from George Herbert’s (1593-1632) most famous sonnet, Holy Sonnet’s X, reflects on Love gently persuading us to love once more. The metaphysical poets were consumed with how we might express the deepest emotions lightly, and the search to understand the physiology of those emotions has long been a goal of medicine.

The history of emotions has been a chequered one. Rather than talk about elements, or humours, or a full history let’s jump in with the person considered by many scientists to be the Einstein of the 19th Century, Charles Robert Darwin (1809 -1882). British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, said “What Galileo and Newton were to the Seventeenth Century, Darwin was to the Nineteenth.”

Darwin’s scientific methodology was a superb mix of observation, analysis, and deep, deep thought. His written output, including publication, was very prolific, and wide-ranging. They included works on the variation caused to domestic animal by selective breeding, books on orchids, geology, tributes to fellow scientists, manuals on the scientific method, including in 1849 the wonderfully entitled On The Use Of The Microscope On Board Ship.

The work that bears directly on our topic was published in 1872, with a second edition edited by Francis Darwin in 1890 The Expression Of Emotions In Animal And Man. It has a precursor in 1867 and 1868 when Darwin published three works that are grouped as Queries About Emotions. By the time Darwin comes to 1872 he has developed a keen interest.

The Expression Of Emotions In Animal And Man is divided into fourteen chapters. The first three cover the general principles of emotions and Darwin then goes from the introduction on to discuss emotions in animal in chapters 4 & 5, which many pet owners should love to read, and then turns to man, looking first at Suffering and Weeping (Ch.6); Low Spirits, Anxiety, Grief, Dejection, Despair (Ch.7); Joy, High Spirits, Love, Tender Feelings, Devotion (Ch.8); Reflection, Meditation, Ill-temper, Sulkiness, Determination (Ch.9); Hatred And Anger (Ch.10); Disdain, Disgust, Contempt, Guilt, Pride etc; Helplessness, Patience, Affirmation And Negation (Ch. 11); Surprise, Astonishment, Fear, Horror (Ch. 11); Self-attention, Shame, Shyness, Modesty: Blushing (Ch. 13) and finally, a final chapter for conclusions.

It is a fascinating read. The full-text is available online with all of Darwin’s publications and a vast number of letters and correspondence at Cambridge University’s Darwin Online Project. Dr John Van Whye and his team have done an outstanding job; and well deserve the 20 million hits the site has received to date.

Darwin’s work was incredibly influential from the earliest days of psychology. Even the William James, as well as E Thorndike, and John B Watson, and then finally B F Skinner of the behaviorists, as well as Ivan Pavlov, along with Vladimir M Bekhterev, Pavlov’s arch nemesis (Who made a very important contribution to neuroscience through his work on the hippocampus and memory), were all deeply influenced by Charles Darwin’s work. There is an excellent book that covers the tale by Robert Boakes called “From Darwin To Behaviorism” (Cambridge University Press 1984).

To quickly illustrate the point, Darwin’s précis of the first chapter reads as follows: “The three chief principles stated–The first principle–Serviceable actions become habitual in association with certain states of the mind, and are performed whether or not of service in each particular case– The force of habit–Inheritance–Associated habitual movements in man–Reflex actions–Passage of habits into reflex actions– Associated habitual movements in the lower animals–Concluding remarks” One can see the origins of operant conditioning, think Pavlov’s dogs, here!

At the same time that Darwin was studying the outward appearance of emotions Pierre Paul Broca (1824-1880), a French anatomist was looking for emotions from the inside out. Paul Broca, as he preferred to be known, has from an early age shown exceptional aptitude. He was enrolled as a medical student when he was only 17 and graduated by the age of 20. Even given that his father was a doctor himself it is still a remarkable achievement. By the time he was 24 he had been appointed professor of surgical pathology at Le Sorbonne.

He is best known for identifying the key speech area, named after him, and which

along with the Wernick area, discovered by Carl Wernicke, (1848-1905) make up the two main language processing units in the brain.

However, as significant, and possibly even more so, was Broca’s discovery of the limbic pathway. The limbic pathway looks like a loop running from the hippocampus just above the brain stem at the bottom of the brain. If you took a picture of the brain and drew a ring from bottom center, then went back, and then up forward and round, it would pretty much look like the limbic pathway. the important thing to note is that it transverses many functional areas of the brain - in other words, it has a big effect.

Broca began firstly with otters. And he thought that the olfactory tract and smell were directly involved. But he also know that in animals without smell and so olifactory tract, e.g. dolphins, the limbic tract was still fully developed. He wrote:

“. . . il constitue dans le manteau une division primaire, une division fondamentale qui est plus qu’un lobe, qui renferme d’ailleurs plusieurs lobes, et que le simple nom de lobe ne caracteriserait pas suffisamment: je l’appellerai done le grand lobe limbique.”

Broca never achieved full support for his idea that here was the emotional tract until 75 years later when the Papez

Pathway was discovered by American neuropathologist and MD James Papez (1883 - 1958). He took the accumulated evidence and began working on the problem. He developed his hypothesis by injecting rabies into animal brains and seeing how it progressed. He was a particularly brilliant lecturer according to accounts with a special interest in paralysis. The Papez circuit is one of the main pathways of the Limbic system and is responsible for emotions. It also plays a major role in memory.

The limbic pathway runs through much pf the brain’s main influencing architecture for homeostasis and cognition. For example, the cingulate gyrus takes care of blood pressure and heart beat, but also plays a role in attentiveness. Both motivation to succeed and fears are in the amygdala, sleep, sexual arousal, hormonal release are in the hypothalamus, and the thalamus itself. The best analogy I have heard of the thalamus is that if the frontal cortex is the boss, doing all the thinking and solving, then the thalamus is a super-secretary as there along with the cerebellum all afferent (incoming) signals get cleared.

1. Language and Reasoning 2. Frontal Eye Field and Speech 3. Emotions and Personality

Ok, So what does this mean for us? How does knowing the anatomy of an emotion help us to deal better with our emotions? Well, it does have an important health aspect as the Limbic pathway is known for its influence on the endocrine system, as we discussed on days one and two, and lights up during sex through its connections to the nucleus accubens - the brain’s pleasure center, and is one of the main hitting points for drug effects. As it is also attached to the amygdala, as we discussed on day two, the fight /flight center, and the hippocampus the memory center (Think of a hippo running through a camp, and picture that it has the letter M for memory tattooed on it), we begin to see how recreational drug use creates wild euphoria, followed by depression, or the need for another feeling kick, and affects the memory. The one thing we have learned from the limbic system is that a happy brain is a healthy brain.

This brings up-to date with Dr Martin Seligman. As the main influencer in a key movement in modern psychology, positive psychology, he is a hugely influential and an important figure in psychology. A former head of clinical training at the University of Pennsylvania, and President of the American Psychology Society. He was also named the 13th most cited psychologist of the 20th Century Why? Well, his work has led to psychology being about positive prevention and well-being rather than dealing with the problems that humans have. Traditional fields of clinical, forensic, criminal, development, cognitive etc; have all integrated his approaches. It is very important to note that the field of positive psychology and happiness, more accurately called eudaomonia, is founded on rigourous scientific principles and is not some self-help, folk-psychology movement.

There is a wonderful video, which pokes fun a the difference a century in psychology has made, of a Seligman’s learned optimism on an elderly patient: Sigmund Freud. It is fun, but also very instructive.

As we learn more and more about happiness, well-being, and positiveness we see something: empirical proof from fMRI scans that happy brains produce healthier bodies it keeps the body in better homeostasis. As we discussed on day one and two the HPA-axis produces stress hormones, and it sees the limbic pathway balances or augment this depends depeding on whether we are happy or depressed. Extraordinary really. Happiness is the key to a healthy life.

Tomorrow, we will look at our known strategies that can be used in positive psychology, in particular Appreciative Inquiry, to understand that stress is conquerable.

Day Four: Strategies for happiness, as opposed to strategies for stress