Brain Activity Prolongs Life

Brain Activity Prolongs Life.
Many phrases lay bare how emotions sham the body: Loss makes you feel "heartbroken," you suffer from "butterflies" in the stomach when nervous, and nauseating things make you "sick to your stomach". Now, a new study from Finland suggests connections between emotions and body parts may be prevalent across cultures. The researchers coaxed Finnish, Swedish and Taiwanese participants into tender various emotions and then asked them to link their feelings to body parts. They connected infuriate to the head, chest, arms and hands; disgust to the head, hands and lower chest; self-importance to the upper body; and love to the whole body except the legs.

As for anxiety, participants heavily linked it to the mid-chest. "The most surprising element was the consistency of the ratings, both across individuals and across all the tested wording groups and cultures," said study lead author Lauri Nummenmaa, an deputy professor of cognitive neuroscience at Finland's Aalto University School of Science. However, one US expert, Paul Zak, chairman of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University in California, was unimpressed by the findings.

He discounted the study, saying it was weakly designed, failed to agree how emotions guide and "doesn't examine a thing". But for his part, Nummenmaa said the probe is useful because it sheds light on how emotions and the body are interconnected. "We wanted to understand how the body and the bias work together for generating emotions. By mapping the bodily changes associated with emotions, we also aimed to perceive how different emotions such as disgust or sadness actually govern bodily functions".