Does anyone know what part of the brain controls emotions? Or is there even part of the brain that does that?

Question

just look above

Answer 1

How do you know what emotion you're having? How do you know if you're content, in love, excited, hopeful, determined, certain, confused, guilty, ashamed, sad, afraid, or angry, among others? For each of those there's a different pattern of facial expressions, ones that are recognized by other humans worldwide with little cultural variation. For each of those we have thoughts in response to the feeling, thoughts about what we need to do or what others might do in response to our feeling. We might have those thoughts in the form of words, images or memories, or we might just have an intution, a cognitive "feeling" without anything explicit, from which our mind goes wherever it goes next.

For all of those things you feel something in your mind and something in your body, many more than what I just listed. I can't think of any feeling that isn't in my body at least a little, as well as whatever I have in my mind about it. For some emotions it feels like it's all about you, something all internal. For other emotions something outside of us is an essential part of the emotion. It's not just our imagination or our culture that has us saying things like, "That makes me sad or angry or happy." If that thing wasn't there that emotion wouldn't have happened, even though we can be trained or train ourselves to modify what makes us feel what.

Knowing all that and knowing neuroscience tells you about emotion. The most primitive vertebrate nervous systems have a simple organization. There are neurons specialized for sensation and neurons specialized for movement. Both these categories of cells are then either oriented to what's going on within us or outside of us. Every human spinal cord is strictly organized into columns of cells that are somatic sensory, autonomic sensory, autonomic motor, and somatic motor, exactly in that order from dorsal to ventral. It is a legacy to us from the earliest vertebrates. One can follow these columns up into the more complicated structures of the brain and understand a lot about the brain.

When you feel angry, there is a lot of autonomic and somatic motor activity that tells you you're angry. You feel a surge of energy. You might feel your heart beat faster and the warmth to your skin as your sympathetic nervous system gets ready to be active. Your somatic motor connections cause your muscles to tense everywhere, with your face tensing up in a way everyone would say is angry from looking at it.

How did you get this way? Maybe you just saw something that you don't like. Maybe there was more than that. Many athletes have experiences where they were only a little angry until someone hit them. Then they were instantly very angry.

For any emotion, sensations come into our brain from outside and inside, and emotional responses result, responses that we don't have to learn. Culture teaches us different meanings to what other people say and do and different norms for how we should express our emotions, but all the emotions we have are shared by almost all humans because parts of our brain are all wired up the same way. Neuroscientists know that sensations from the outside world, from the spinal cord on up, go to the back part of our brainstem and back part of our cerebral cortex, from where they don't converge on some mythical decision center, but are relayed forward to trigger emotional responses out of the limbic system, including the amygdala, and more symbolic responses out of the more recent parts of our cortex like speech areas.

It's not like all that happens independently, though. The idea that we have a war in us between emotion and reason is a typically human oversimplification of many different conflicts between our biology and our culture. It's a war in the minds of some, in the software, but not in their brains, the hardware, where the limbic system and neocortex are thoroughly connected, so most of us do OK at talking about our emotions. At the same time, how we talk about things influences the emotions our limbic system drives. It's not like one exists without the other.

None of these places constitute a control center for emotional responses, meaning those responses that involve the autonomic nervous system, rather than only involving somatic muscles, responses that will generate a Galvanic Skin Response rather than not, whatever definition you like. Those autonomic motor columns reach up into the hypothalamus, where many actions are coordinated that we would call emotions, such as the least cerebral parts of anger, but also responses we wouldn't call emotion like a fever or shivering from being cold. Sometimes it's hard to tell. Goose bumps might be emotional, but might not. Tears might be emotional, but might be allergies or some other eye irritation that needs your brain to result in tears being shed. The line between where we think our body is just doing something on it's own and where we call it emotion is hard to draw.

So it's silly to say the hypothalamus is in charge of emotions. It just runs some machinery that can be emotional or not. The hypothalamus is heavily connected to the amygdala and the temporal lobes, though. In primitive mammals the main job of the limbic system is to get excited about two kinds of stimuli, things to avoid and things to approach, whether that approach is in order to eat it, have sex with it, seek shelter, whatever.

The temporal lobes are loosely organized towards those two possibilities. It's unusual that temporal lobe epilepsy produces an emotional aura, but when it does, there is a pattern to where seizures produce what feeling. Fear is the most common such aura and foci of seizures related to fear cover the largest territory toward the front of the temporal lobe. The next most common feeling is contentment, which is more posterior in the temporal lobe. The sorts of emotional states one can study this way are nowhere near as complicated as the emotions we all feel. But there is this pattern and other research that points to an amygdala that takes sensory inputs from inside us and outside us, communicates with other cells about memories and however else we learn, and signals off when there's something inside us or outside of us to avoid, to be afraid of, or something that we should approach, that we should pay attention to, with the rest of the brain figuring out what sort of attention we should pay this thing.

That doesn't make the amygdala the center of our emotions. It is a structure that is essential to our paying a healthy attention to stimuli, but then that information goes elsewhere to determine which emotion of the many we recognize will come from this thing that excited the amygdala. The more primitive parts of that emotion involve the hypothalamus. The verbal parts involve the speech areas. The parts of emotions that compel us to do something, anything, are not as well understood, but it's not one brain area or one neurotransmitter that is doing that.

These beliefs some have that there is a tight association between particular neurotransmitters and particular emotions and disorders are an incredible oversimplification. GABA is an important inhibitory neurotransmitter for many reasons. One way is in how fear tends to arrest our behavior, to make us stop what we're doing, presumably because of circuits involving GABA that go from the temporal cortex that lets us feel fear in our mind to motor areas, circuits that accounts for fear stopping us.

Yet in another sense GABA can be seen as working against fear. Alcohol and benzodiazepines both work through GABA receptors by enhancing GABA's effects throughout the cortex to shut things off, so we lose the fear that the temporal lobes would otherwise be signalling. Why? Because we've poisoned our brain. We've reduced the possibilities for how our brain can react to stimuli. We've taken the neurotransmitter from a state where it can precisely mediate the signals between neurons to one where it is pushed way off in one direction. More is not always better, and even more important than that, emotions are produced by the entire brain, not by a single neurotransmitter. Throwing a wrench into that brain has its costs whether you do that through a prescription or over the counter.

Sometimes such medication is necessary, for physical problems or mental ones. Medicines that poison our inflammatory responses are very helpful for many physical problems, at a cost of weakening the body's defenses for certain other problems. It's often not simple to say what the healthiest course of action is. That something some doctors know better than others.

It's the same thing when it comes to manipulating brain chemicals, particularly when those brain chemicals are not related to our emotions in a simple way. Antidepressants that work through serotonin have an effect on serotonin long before they have an effect on depression. Likewise they affect serotonin in everyone, but only help with depression in some. Why? No one knows, as far as I know. I've heard speculation about that, but not data. Emotions involve the entire brain, not individual neurotransmitters. Individual neurotransmitters can affect those emotions, but they are not at the center of those emotions.

There are books written about the neuroscience of emotion. I don't know that they teach you anything about how to live with emotions. All of our emotions can be healthy. Fear can teach us prudence. Anger can teach us determination. Sadness can help our capacity for empathy. Understanding the biology of emotion will improve when this century's genetic revolution reveals mechanisms behind personality and mental disorders. In the meantime, though, I would say that neuroscience shows there is no center for emotion, but also shows that emotions are very important to what our brains do for us, involving all of our brain, so we should learn how to be healthy emotionally.

Answer 2

Emotion Location

With all the other things it does, is it any surprise that the brain runs your emotions? Maybe you got the exact toy you wanted for your birthday and you were really happy. Or your friend is sick and you feel sad. Or your little brother messed up your room, so you're really angry! Where do those feelings come from? Your brain, of course.

Your brain has a little bunch of cells on each side called the amygdala (say: uh-mig-duh-luh). The word amygdala is Latin for almond, and that's what this area looks like. Scientists believe that the amygdala is responsible for emotion. It's normal to feel all different kinds of emotions, good and bad. Sometimes you might feel a little sad, and other times you might feel scared, or silly, or glad.

Be Good to Your Brain
So what can you do for your brain? Plenty.

Eat healthy foods. They contain potassium and calcium, two minerals that are important for the nervous system.
Get a lot of playtime (exercise).
Wear a helmet when you ride your bike or play other sports that require head protection.
Don't drink alcohol, take drugs, or use tobacco.
Use your brain by doing challenging activities, such as puzzles, reading, playing music, making art, or anything else that gives your brain a workout!

Answer 3

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
Does anyone know what part of the brain controls emotions? Or is there even part of the brain that does that?

Answer 4

The amygdalae "perform a primary role in the processing and memory of emotional reactions." When we hurt emotionally it's because that damn amygdala is at it again.

Answer 5

The amygdala....an almond shaped part of the center of the brain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala

Answer 6

amygdala that is the control of emotions

Answer 7

Hi! The frontal lobes (behind forehead), limbic system. Good luck.

Answer 8

different things.
Different neurotransmitters (brain chemicals) control different emotions
Feel Good Ones:
* ENDORPHINS (Opiods): Mood elevating, enhancing, euphoric. The more present, the happier you are! Natural pain killers.
* NOREPINEPHRINE: Excitatory, feel happy, alert, motivated. Anti-depressant, appetite control, energy, sexual arousal.
* DOPAMINE: Feelings of bliss and pleasure, euphoric, appetite control, controlled motor movements, feel focused.
* ACETYLCHOLINE: Alertness, memory, sexual performance, appetite control, release of growth hormone.
* PHENYLETHYLMINE (PEA): Feelings of bliss, involved in feelings of infatuation (high levels found in chocolate).

Inhibitory
* ENKEPHALINS: Restrict transmission of pain, reduce craving, reduce depression.
* GABA (Gamma Amino Butyric Acid): Found throughout central nervous system, anti-stress, anti-anxiety, anti-panic, anti-pain; Feel calm, maintain control, focus.

Hormonal
* SEROTONIN: Promotes and improves sleep, improves self esteem, relieves depression, diminishes craving, prevents agitated depression and worrying.
* MELATONIN: "Rest and recuperation" and "anti-aging" hormone. Regulates body clock.
* OXYTOCIN: Stimulated by Dopamine. Promotes sexual arousal, feelings of emotional attachment, desire to cuddle.

Answer 9

The cortex!

Answer 10

the anus