By Staff Writer - January, 6th 2014

Emotions adjust not only our mental, but also our bodily states. This way the 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.

Natural Health News — New research has revealed that what we feel isn’t just in our heads. Different emotions are – literally – experienced throughout the body.

These sensations are an important feature of our emotional experiences, say the Finish researchers working out of Aalto University. For example, anxiety may be experienced as pain in the chest, whereas falling in love may trigger warm, pleasurable sensations all over the body.

The research involved over 700 individuals from Finland, Sweden and Taiwan and was carried out online. After inducing different emotional states in those taking part, the participants were shown pictures of human bodies on a computer, and asked to colour the bodily regions where they most felt their emotions as a physical sensation.

Researchers found that the most common emotions trigger strong bodily sensations, and the bodily maps of these sensations were topographically different for different emotions. The sensation patterns were, however, consistent across …

 

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