Friday 31 July 2015

Emotions Mapped on Human Body - Ms. Pooja Shukla


Emotions Mapped on Human Body

Ms. Pooja Shukla

Department of Communication Skills, MEFGI, Rajkot

Emotions are an integral part of the human existence. Emotions trigger string bodily sensations and topographically, the mapping of different emotions is different on the body. As quoted by assistant professor Lauri Nummennmaa from Aalto University – “Emotions adjust not only our mental, but also our bodily states. This way they prepare us to react swiftly to the dangers, but also to the opportunities such as pleasurable social interactions present in the environment. Awareness of the corresponding bodily changes may subsequently trigger the conscious emotional sensations, such as the feeling of happiness. The findings have major implications for our understanding of the functions of emotions and their bodily basis.” On the other hand, the results help us to understand different emotional disorders and provide novel tools for their diagnosis.

Emotions are felt in various parts of the body, as happiness is felt in the entire body, anger is concentrated in the head. Many people distinctively feel emotions in certain part of their body – stress in their neck, anxiety in their stomach, happiness in their chest, anger in their head etc. A fascinating research was carried out by the Finnish scientists on more than 700 voluntary individuals from Finland, Sweden and Taiwan. The volunteers were shown various words, stories, movies and images and were subsequently shown pictures if human bodies on a computer and asked to colour the bodily regions whose activity they felt increasing or decreasing. The research was funded by European Research Council (ERC), The Academy of Finland and the Aalto University (aivoAALTO) project. The results were published on 31 December, 2013 in the scientific journal Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences.

The research produced consistent heat maps that were statistically unique for each emotion.





Description: Fig. 2.The map displays that anger is mainly concentrated on the head, chest and the lower part of the face and arms, with particular intensity on the hands, whereas disgust is more concentrated mainly around the mouth and throat. Love dominates the face, chest and lower abdomen. Happiness proves to be the most significant emotion that solicits our entire body as it is concentrated in the entire body equally, especially on the face and the chest. Moreover, emotions like depression express the generation of decline in the senses in the arms and the legs. The researchers proved that the results were concordant across the various volunteers. They proposed that the body maps drawn are culturally universal.



Note – The entire experiment can be retrieved from http://www.pnas.org/content/111/2/646.full

 

 

Saturday 25 July 2015

Research in Progress-4-Mr.Bhavdip Chavda

Romantic Literary Influence on the Rise of Indian Poetry in English

Mr. Bhavdip Chavda

Department of Communication Skills, MEFGI, Rajkot 

(An Excerpt from Ph.D Research)

Indian Poetry in English rose during the nineteenth century when India was a colonised country. Forgotten for a century, today, this poetry has generated new interests with stimulating questions as: what could be reasons and sources that gave birth to completely a new realm of poetry which did not have any predecessors? What could be influences that had positively impacted and enriched the art of poetry writing in a foreign tongue?
With hypotheses to the questions, the present research commences with three major discussions: firstly, discussing the birth of Indian Writing in English, its historical development and its nomenclature. Secondly, by drawing contemporary parallels between India and Europe. Lastly by exploring theoretical aspects of Influence Studies of Comparative Literature. After such prefatory discussions, it closely and critically studies three major Indian poets and their poetry in English in detail. These poets are Henry Derozio, Michael Madhusudan Dutt and Toru Dutt. Each of these poets has completely been studied with the contextual approach leading to highlight English literary influence of Romanticism in individual chapters. The major Romantic perceptions/elements that are highlighted in the Indian poetry are Nature, Supernaturalism, Mysticism, Love, Separation, Medieval and Hellenism, Nationalism, Humanism and Freedom along with the stylistic features of the Romantic poets.
The first generation Indian poets were successful in expressing their passions in a foreign language but they were largely under the dominative spell of English Romanticism. English Romanticism supplemented the rise of Indian poetry in English with their themes and narrative techniques and thus aided it to achieve the poetic excellence.

Tuesday 21 July 2015

Socratic Question - 3- Dr.Sunil Sagar

Socratic Question-3

How to design sessions for Proficiency in English course for Engineering?

Dr. Sunil Sagar
Head
Department of Communication Skills, MEFGI, Rajkot 

Monday 20 July 2015

Shabda-II Reading Poetry- Fire Caught



Fire Caught



The gold moth did not love him
So, gorgeous, she flew away.
But the gray moth circled the flame
Until the break of day.
And then, with wings like a dead desire,
She fell, fire-caught, into the flame.                         


 -Langston Hughes


(The poem is shared by Ms. Gazal Pasnani and is open to discussion)

Saturday 18 July 2015

Shabda-Reading Club-II-Reading Poetry

Dear All,


Here are the four poems that we have relished  in the second session of the Reading Club. We can continue discussing our interpretations on the same here.




(1)
A poem is a voice-mail:
the poet has stepped out, most likely
will not be back. Please leave a message
after you hear a gunshot.


-Vera Pavlova


 (2)


Let’s have one day for girls and boyses

When you can make the grandest noises.

Screech, scream, holler, and yell—

Buzz a buzzer, clang a bell,

Sneeze—hiccup—whistle—shout,

Laugh until your lungs wear out,

Toot a whistle, kick, a can,

Bang a spoon against a pan,

Sing, yodel, bellow, hum,

Blow a horn, beat a drum,

Rattle a window, slam a door,

Scrape a rake across the floor,

 

Use a drill, drive a nail,

Turn the hose on the garbage pail,

Shout Yahoo—Hurrah—Hooray,

Turn up the music all the way,

Try and bounce your bowling ball,

Ride a skateboard up the wall,

Chomp your food with a smack and a slurp,

Chew—chomp—hiccup—burp.

One day a year do all of these,

The rest of the days—be quiet please.

-Shel Silverstein




I asked the Zebra:

Are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?

And the zebra asked me:

Are you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with quiet times?
Or are you quiet with noisy times?
Are you happy with some sad days?
Or are you sad with some happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?

And on and on and on and on
And on and on he went.
I’ll never ask a zebra
About stripes
Again


-Shel Silverstein


(4)
I am God—
Without one friend,
Alone in my purity
World without end.
Below me young lovers
Tread the sweet ground—
But I am God—
I cannot come down.
Spring!
Life is love!
Love is life only!
Better to be human
Than God—and lonely.


-Langston Hughes