Emotion: a mental and physiological state associated with a wide variety of feelings, thoughts, and behaviours. It is a prime determinant of the sense of subjective well-being and appears to play a central role in many human activities (1).
There is much controversy concerning how emotions are defined and classified and what their source is. Do emotions originate in the body and then get perceived in the head where we invent a story to explain them (2) or do they originate in the head and trickle down to the body (3)?
Candace Pert and Dr. Joseph Dispenza, amongst others, believe that both theories apply, and explain in the movie “What the Bleep” in laymen terms the chemical nature of emotions and what impact this has on our health.
Candace Pert earned a Ph.D. in pharmacology from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the laboratory of Solomon Snyder in 1974, and is the neuroscientist who discovered the opiate receptor, the cellular bonding site for endorphins in the brain. She wrote “Molecules of Emotion: Why You Feel the Way You Feel” (1997), a frank account of her research into the physiology of emotions, and the opposition she encountered. She was featured in "Washingtonian" magazine (Dec. 2001) as one of Washington's fifty "Best and Brightest" individuals. She holds a number of patents for modified peptides in the treatment of psoriasis, Alzheimer's disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, stroke and head trauma. The implications of her research are revolutionary and give substantial credibility to alternative therapies that use mind-body techniques, such as kinesiology. Candace Pert’s research provides us with a greater insight into the chemical aspects of emotions and how they link the body to the mind.
Anatomy & Physiology of Emotions in a Nutshell
The core components of the brain are excitable cells that process and transmit information, called neurons (4). Neurons consist of a nucleus, where most protein synthesis occurs, an axon and dendrites:
The axon is like a cable, which can extend hundreds, or even thousands times the diameter of the soma in length. The axon terminal contains specialized structures where neurotransmitters are released. This is how it carries nerve signals away from the soma; and communicates the information to other target neurons. Dendrites are extensions with many branches, like a tree, and contain receptor sites. This is where the majority of information input to the neurons occurs (5). The process by which the information is transferred is called synapse: the neurotransmitter acts like a little key, and the receptor site like a lock. When they meet, they open a passage for ions, which then change the balance of ions on the outside and the inside of the next neuron, and the whole process starts over again, thus converting chemical signal into electrical and back (6).
 
The Function of Emotions
Now that we understand how information is transmitted within the brain cells, we can investigate how this relates to emotions. It is commonly understood that emotions play a role in our cognitive processes. Attention, perception, memory, decision making, are influenced by emotional states (7). The emotional coordination of brain activity converts conscious experiences into emotional experiences (8). Candice Pert stresses the importance of this process for our survival:
“The cave woman who could remember which cave had the gentle guy who gave her food is more likely to be our foremother than the cavewoman who confused it with the cave that held the killer bear. The emotion of love (or something resembling it) and the emotion of fear would help her secure her memories.”
Dr Joe Dispenza explains in “What the Bleep” that where the neurons of the brain connect, they integrate into a thought or a memory, and that these thoughts are organised by association into a thought pattern, or ‘neuro-net’. He illustrates this as follows: “The concept of and the feeling of love for instance is stored in this vast neuro-net. But we built the concept of love from many other different idea’s. Some people have love connected to disappointment; when they think about love, they experience the memory of pain, sorrow, anger and even rage. Rage may be linked to hurt, which maybe linked to a specific person which then is connected back to love.”
It seems therefore that it is the emotion that has associative ability to organise thoughts or memories and dictate the “route” of the information in the brain. But how does this organisation actually take place? Miles Herkenham, a colleague of Candace, concluded that the largest portion of information that is going around the brain is kept in order not by the synaptic connections of brain cells but by the specificity of receptors – in other words, by the ability of a receptor to bind with only one kind of messenger chemical. That means that in the brain, a neuro-net is built based on the selective ability of the receptors of messenger chemical. If we have learnt that it is actually the emotion which organise the brain’s activities into a neuro-network of associative memories; therefore, an emotion consists of specific neuro-peptides and their receptors.
The Emotional Brain
The area’s of the brain involved with emotions and memories is collectively called the ‘Limbic System’(9). The most relevant to the generation of emotions are the Thalamus, Hypothalamus, and the Amygdala:
Thalamus: whenever an impulse travels from somewhere in your body (except from nose, sensations of smell are sent directly to the brain by the olfactory nerve), it passes through the thalamus. The thalamus then relays the impulse to the proper location in the cerebral cortex, which then interprets the message.
Hypothalamus: the hypothalamus controls pituitary function by releasing hormones. And interestingly, the endocrine system is also involved in emotion. Although psychiatrists still disagree on precisely how this endocrine control affects emotions, depressed individuals sometimes have measurable abnormalities of the hypothalamic –pituitary –axis. These endocrine abnormalities have no proven clinical significance, but persons with profound endocrine derangements (such as Cushing’s disease or hyperthyroidism) may have significant psychiatric symptoms as part of their illnesses.
Over 60 years ago, Walter Hess showed that highly localized hypothalamic stimulation of animals’ brains consistently evoked a range of stereotypical physical and behavioural responses. When appropriately chosen hypothalamic sites were electronically stimulated, Hess’ cats displayed behaviour that we know to precede a cat fight.
Amygdala: recent research on the generation of emotions assigns an increasingly major role to a previously little know member of the limbic system: the Amygdala. The amygdala has direct connections to and from the hypothalamus, and many of the hypothalamic responses discovered by Hess may actually have their origins in the amygdala. Experiments confirm that the amygdale is involved in a wide variety of emotions and emotionally mediated behaviours: for example fear, apprehension, sexual response, and feeding and suckling behaviours (10).
The Emotional Body
Candace Pert and her team discovered in the 1980s that many receptors were located in far-flung areas, inches away from the neurotransmitters, or neuro peptides, as she calls them: If peptides and their receptors were communicating to each other through synapse, they should be only minuscule distances apart. […] In fact, the way in which peptides circulate through the body, finding their target receptors in regions far more distant than had ever previously been thought possible, made the brain communication system resemble the endocrine system, whose hormones can travel the length and breadth of our bodies. The brain is like a bag of hormones! […] We can no longer consider the emotional brain to be confined to the classical locations of the amygdala, hippocampus and hypothalamus (11). For example, we have now discovered other anatomical locations where high concentrations of almost every neuro peptide receptor exists, locations such as the dorsal horn, or back side of the spinal cord. […]Almost every peptide receptor we looked for could be found in this spinal-cord site that filters all incoming bodily sensations. In fact, we have found that in virtually all locations where information from any of the five senses […] enters the nervous system, we will find a high concentration of neuro peptide receptors (12).
This part of the spine receives several types of sensory information from the body, including light touch, proprioception, and vibration. The information is sent from receptors of the skin, bones, and joints through the sensory neurons in the dorsal root ganglion.
It has further been discovered that neurotransmitters that these neuro peptides have receptors in the brain, which indicates a two-way communication between body and brain.
Taking it one step further – Addiction
Dr Joe Dispenza (13) explains how hypothalamus assembles peptides into certain messenger chemicals that match the emotional states that we experience on a daily basis. So there are specific messenger chemicals for anger, for sadness, for victimisation etc.: “There is a chemical that matches every emotional state that we experience. And the moment that we experience that emotional state, in our body or in our brain, that hypothalamus will immediately assemble the peptide and then release it through the pituitary into the bloodstream. The moment it makes it into the blood stream, it finds its way to different centres or different parts of the body. Now, every single cell in the body has these receptors on the outside.”
He then points out that heroine uses the same receptor mechanisms on the cell as our emotional chemicals do, and continues to suggest that we can be addicted to any neuro peptide, and thus any emotion. He explains that we look to fulfil the biochemical craving of the cells of our body, by creating situations that meet our chemical need. Like an addict, we will always need a little bit more in order to get a chemical rush or a high. Dr Joe Dispenza defines emotional addiction as a situation in which you can’t control your emotional state. He points out that emotions are not bad, that “they colour the richness of our experiences.” It is the addiction that is the problem, and that this is not just psychological, it is biochemical. The danger of such an addiction is that when the cell is repeatedly bombarded with the same messenger chemical, this will increase the number of receptors specific to that messenger chemical when the cell divides. The mother or sister cell will have more receptor sites for those particular emotional neuro-peptides, and less receptor sites for vitamins, minerals, nutrients, fluid exchange and even the release of waste product and toxins.
How can you stop it? Dr Joe Dispenza explains how to break the thought pattern that feeds the addiction: “Who is in the driver’s seat when we control our emotions or when we respond to our emotions? We know physiologically that nerve cells that fire together wire together. If you practice something over and over again, those nerve cells have a longstanding relationship. If you get angry on a daily basis, if you get frustrated on a daily basis, if you suffer on a daily basis, if you give reason for the victimisation in your life you are re-wiring and re-integrating that neuro-net on a daily basis and that neuro-net now has a long-term relationship with all those other nerve cells called an identity. We also know that nerve cells that don’t fire together no longer wire together; they lose their long-term relationship because every time we interrupt the thought process that produces a chemical response in the body, every time we interrupt it, those nerve cells that are connected to each other start breaking the long-term relationship. When we start interrupting and observing, not by stimulus and response and that automatic reaction, but by observing the effects it takes, then we are no longer the body-mind-conscious-emotional person that’s responding to it’s environment as if it is automatic.”
How can we use this knowledge?
This knowledge provides a backdrop against which we can begin to understand the actual connection between emotions and our physical health, on a physiological level. It demonstrates the importance of emotional well-being and the need for emotional maintenance, as well as physical.
Self-help with regards to Addiction to Emotion:
A good way to evaluate whether you are addicted to a certain emotion is to monitor your emotions for a week. Make sure you keep note of the intensity of the emotion, and its recurrence pattern (14). It will give you a clear indication of what emotions are prevalent and to what degree. Then distance yourself from the emotion and just observe it, rather than act on it. An initial reluctance to "cooperate" is usually an indication that you identify yourself with the emotion and see it as an important part of your character, or have some sort of gain from it. Hopefully this article has helped you to understand the biochemical nature of emotions, so you can distance yourself from the emotion much easier.
At Source Therapies we use a wide range of techniques that fall within the emotional realm, which all greatly contribute to other areas of your health.
Footnotes:
(1) Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion (2) See W. James and C. Lange: W. James, What is an Emotion? Mind (9), pp. 188-205, 1884 and C. Lange, Ueber Gemuthsbewgungen, 3, 8, 1887. An example of the so-called James – Lange theory would be: I see a bear. My muscles tense, my heart races. I feel afraid. (3) W. Cannon and P. Bard: An example of the so-called Cannon-Bard theory would be: I see a man outside my window. I am afraid. I begin to perspire. (4) They are also found in the spinal cord, vertebrates and ventral nerve cord in invertebrates, and peripheral nerve (5) Information outflow can also occur, but not across chemical synapses; the backflow of a nerve impulse is inhibited by the fact that an axon does not possess chemo receptors and dendrites cannot secrete neuro chemical transmitters, or neurotransmitters. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron (6) http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/theneuron.html (7) Joseph LeDoux, The Emotional Brain, Simon & Schuster Ltd, 1996.(8) Jean-Marc Fellous, Michael A. Arbib Who Needs Emotions?: The Brain Meets the Robot, Oxford University Press US, 2005. (9) The collection of areas of the brain most commonly thought to be involved in emotion is called the ‘Limbic System’. It consists mainly of the Amygdala, Hippocampus, Thalamus, Hypothalamus, prefrontal area. See for more information http://www.healing-arts.org/n-r-limbic.htm and Principles of Anatomy and Physiology, pp. 490-491, 495 and http://people.howstuffworks.com/laughter4.htm .(10) From Noreen Cavan Frisch, Lawrence E. Frisch, Lynn Keegan, Psychiatric Mental Nursing, p. 65-66Thomson Delmar Learning, 2001. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3UWVQj0fp54C (11) The collection of areas of the brain most commonly thought to be involved in emotion is called the ‘Limbic System’. It consists mainly of the Amygdala, Hippocampus, Thalamus, Hypothalamus, prefrontal area. See for more information http://www.healing-arts.org/n-r-limbic.htm and Principles of Anatomy and Physiology, pp. 490-491, 495 and http://people.howstuffworks.com/laughter4.htm (12) Candace B. Pert PhD, Molecules of emotions, Scribner, 1997 (13) See www.drJoeDispenza.com (14) A technique called Emotional Freedom technique has been used to change peptides: see http://www.emofree.com/articles/peptides.htm |