The Brain - A User's Guide to Emotions and Emotional Styles

This is a cool graphic that Pamela Brooke (from bestpsychologydegrees.com) who emailed the link to me because she thought those of you who read this blog might find it interesting - and it is pretty cool.

Below the graphic, I have included the text from the section on emotional styles and how to change (retrain) your brain.

Image source: www.bestpsychologydegrees.com

The Brain: A User's Guide to Emotions

Emotional Styles - How to Retrain Your Brain

Six emotional dimensions that shape our lives and determine how we respond to our environment and the people around us, based on activity in the brain.

Resilience

- Definition: The ability to recover from adversity.
- Originates: Signals between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.
- How to retrain: Engage regularly in mindfulness meditation, focusing on your breathing and the sensations in your body.

Outlook

- Definition: The ability to sustain a positive emotional viewpoint.
- Originates: Ventral straitum
- How to retrain: Fill your workstation and home with positive reminders of happy times, such as vacations or photos of friends and family; change those photos every few weeks. Express gratitude frequently by thanking people and keeping a gratitude journal.

Self-awareness

- Definition: The ability to determine the physical signals that reflect emotions
- Originates: Signals between visceral organs and the insula
- How to retrain: For the overly self-aware and critical, practice non-judgmentally observing thoughts and feelings; for those who want to develop more self-awareness, tune in frequently to your body and determine how you feel and where those feelings originate.

Social interactions

- Definition: The ability to interpret social cues
- Originates: Interplay between the amygdala and fusiform
- How to retrain: Watch the body language of strangers and try to guess what emotions they are expressing. Work up to doing the same with family, friends and colleagues, monitoring how their body language matches with their tone of voice.

Sensitivity to context

- Definition: The ability to regulate responses based on the context of a situation
- Originates: Activity levels in the hippocampus
- How to retrain: List behaviors or events that trigger responses and consider why they did so. Think about your behaviors in those situations, meditating and breathing deeply until you feel more relaxed.

Attention

- Definition: The sharpness and clarity of focus
- Originates: Regulated by the prefrontal cortex
- How to retrain: Spend 10 minutes a day sitting in a quiet room and focusing on one object, refocusing when your attention wanders. 

SOURCES

• http://www.salon.com/2012/02/25/the_scientific_argument_for_being_emotional 
• http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/02/19/tired-of-feeling-bad-the-new-science-of-feelings-can-help.html 
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/04/26/the-emotional-life-of-the-brain/ 
• http://www.forbes.com/pictures/lmj45jefj/change-your-brain-change-your-life/ 
• http://www.brainwaves.com/brain_diagram.html 
• http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-body/brain-article.html 
• http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_04/d_04_cr/d_04_cr_peu/d_04_cr_peu.html 
• http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_04/i_04_cr/i_04_cr_peu/i_04_cr_peu.html 
• http://biology.about.com/od/anatomy/p/temporal-lobes.htm 
• http://homepage.ntlworld.com/teversal/myweb/CNS/thalamus.htm 
• http://biology.about.com/od/anatomy/p/Hypothalamus.htm 
• http://biology.about.com/od/anatomy/a/aa042205a.htm 
• http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/health/psychology/06brain.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print 
• http://www.hhs.gov/opa/familylife/tech_assistance/etraining/adolescent_brain/Development/prefrontal_cortex/ 
• http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_12/i_12_cr/i_12_cr_con/i_12_cr_con.html 
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/facial-recognition-brain-fusiform-gyrus_n_2010192.html 
• http://www.richarddavidson.com

All in the Mind - Our Emotional Brain w/ Richard Davidson

The guest on this week's All in the Mind (from ABC Radio, Australia) is Richard Davidson, author of the new book, The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live - and How You Can Change Them. Davidson is a pioneer in the study of emotions in the brain, and he is a frequent participant in the Dalai Lama's brain science and Buddhism conferences, as well as working with Roshi Joan Halifax in her Zen Brain series at Upaya Zen Center. 

Our Emotional Brain

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Broadcast: Sunday 6 May 2012

Photo: Neuroscientist Richard Davidson (Jeff Miller/ University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Pioneering neuroscientist Richard Davidson deepens our understanding of the mind-body connection.  He’s identified six unique emotional styles and explains the brain chemistry underlying them.  He explains that there are simple strategies and interventions which we can use to change our emotional styles. He believes one effective example is through mindfulness meditation, after studying the brain scans of people who practice it.

Guests

Dr Richard Davidson: Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry Director, Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience Director, Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging & Behaviour University of Wisconsin-Madison USA - http://psych.wisc.edu/faculty/bio/davidson.html

Publications

The Emotional Life of your Brain
by Richard J. Davidson with Sharon Begley

Further Information: The Centre for Investigating Healthy Minds

Presenter: Lynne Malcolm