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.
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.