clearspace coaching
  • Home
  • Coaching
    • What is Your Coaching Area?
    • Leadership Development >
      • Guidelines for Giving Feedback
    • Executive Coaching >
      • Accepting Positive Feedback
      • Theory of Core Qualities
    • Personal Development >
      • Reality Checking
    • Career Coaching
    • Impostor Syndrome
    • Mindfulness
  • THERAPY
    • Sensorimotor Trauma Therapy
    • Internal Family Systems Therapy
  • FAQs
    • What happens in a coaching session?
    • What is Relational Coaching?
  • About
    • Testimonials
  • Fees
  • Contact
    • Free Article
  • Resources
    • Privacy Notice: GDPR
  • Blog

Mapping physiological changes in the body when we feel strong emotions

18/1/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Nummenmaa, L., Glerean, E., Hari, R. & Hietanen, J.K. (27 November 2013) 
'Bodily Maps of Emotions', Psychological and Cognitive Sciences (pnas.org)
Original article:  http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/12/26/1321664111.full.pdf
Data:  http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2013/12/26/1321664111.DCSupplemental/pnas.201321664SI.pdf
Ok, so we know that emotions are produced in the body, as a result of our thinking brain stimulating hormone production. So it's not surprising that the body has a measurable response. 

What I like about this study is this image of the self-reported sensations that participants experienced in response to the stimuli. Also, they looked at so called 'non-basic' emotions, such as anxiety, love, pride and shame. Love looks like the warmest place to be! And just look at the burning cheek areas of shame and it's deactivated legs, also shared strongly in sadness, depression and anxiety. Such familiar feelings for all of us at some level.

There were 5 experimental conditions and 701 participants were asked to colour two silhouettes of human bodies depending on increases and decreases in their internal bodily activation response to emotional words, stories, movies, or facial expressions. 

The researchers state that "Different emotions were consistently associated with statistically separable bodily sensation maps across experiments." The body mapping results showed concordance across participants from Western Europe and East Asia, suggesting cultural universality of these very human emotional experiences - no surprise there!

All the emotions triggered sensations in the head, which suggests physiological changes such as activation of facial musculature, skin temperature and tear secretion, as well as the changes experienced in the mind. There also appears to be an upward energy to approach-oriented emotions (ie. anger, happiness), and a decrease in activation in the lower limbs is seen in the avoidance-oriented ones (ie. depression, shame). 

It's interesting to speculate how we may perceive emotions in those with whom we are interacting, through facial expression, limb activation, temperature for instance, and how we tend to respond. In their discussion, the researchers wondered whether emotional perception and emotional contagion (when we inadvertently pick up another's feeling state as if it were our own) may involve automatic activation of the body's sensory response to emotion, which is then evaluated cognitively. They considered the idea that sensations may underlie our conscious emotional experience, looking for an answer to the chicken and egg question about whether the sensations cause the emotion or vice versa, and was unable to draw any firm conclusions. 

However, it's clear that somatic sensation and embodied experience are both critical in emotional processing, and this points to the effectiveness of body-centred interventions for regulating affect.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Belinda Rydings,
    Coaching Psychologist

    Helping courageous people to grow and manage transitions, stress & self-criticism by coaching with mindfulness, compassion & non-judgement 

    Trauma treatment for PTSD, single event or developmental trauma. Including bullying, abuse, accidents and witnessing traumatic events.

    Archives

    June 2016
    March 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    June 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    October 2013
    September 2013

    Categories

    All
    Addiction
    Attachment Psych
    Compassion
    Developmental Psych
    Emotions
    Events
    Fun Stuff
    Leadership
    Mindfulness
    Neuroscience
    Organisations
    Quotes
    Recovery
    Research
    Society
    The Body
    Trauma

    RSS Feed

Home
Change
What is your Coaching Area?
Choosing a Coach
FAQs
Leadership Coaching
Executive Coaching
Personal Development Coaching
Career Coaching
Mindfulness Coaching
About Belinda
Testimonials
Contact
Resources
Free Article
Clearspace Coaching, London 



Copyright 2017