Emotions
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WHAT ARE EMOTIONS
You enter a room; do not know a soul. People gathered together talking and are in their best party behaviors. Look at their faces; some are down; some are happy. Some are blank in another planet. You have not even seen these folks before but their emotions are obvious to you.
Emotions are part of mental perception. Something triggers the mental reaction like: fear, curiosity, anger, lust, and showing affections toward the one you love. Emotions are how brain reacts and are accompanied by the bodily changes. We have to be very thankful that most of us do posses emotions otherwise life would have been meaningless.
When a woman gives birth to a baby in some cases because of hormonal changes (see Oxytocin ) the mother doesn't create the normal emotional responses toward the new born infant. A mother may hug and kiss her baby but does not receive any pleasure out of it. Everybody would say to her oh my, what a beautiful handsome baby you have? But she would not see it. Life without emotions is not only unimaginable; it is unbearable.
Now that we know how important emotions are? Lets’ see how does it work? What kind of relationship has with the brain? The four important parts involves are: Limbic, hypothalamus, theamygdala, and hippocampuses. I shall first start with Limbic.
Limbic: the role of limbic system is very important; it is a set of structures in the brain and it covers hypothalamus/hippocampus, as well as amygdale. Actions such as hunger, thirst, and responses to pain are being controlled by hypothalamus . It also oversees the bodily changes like breathing, blood pressure as well as arousal in response to emotional changed.
Data in put receives and instructions are being sent out for the rest of the body through hypothalamus. It carries its’ change of body function through the blood stream; a goose bump is one of the examples of hypothalamus being at work.
The amygdala: has a shape of an almond; and is a mass of neurons in each part of brain; the brain posses two the amygdala. There is right one and the left one. In animals when the theamygdala is stimulated electronically; they get very aggressive. But when the amygdala is removed; animals becomes very tame and no longer respond to things that would caused anger in him before.
The last one is hippocampus: It resembles two horns that curve back from amygdala. The hippocampus is very important for making, maintaining, and storing your memories. It does send the information from the senses.
Emotions are the product of millions of years of evolution. They are important part of our lives. Emotions help us in decision- making as well as survival and reproduction. Emotions made us survive for the tens of thousands of years.