by LAURI NUMMENMAA, ENRICO GLEREAN, RIITTA HARI & JARI K. HIETANEN
Fig. 1.
Significance
Emotions coordinate our behavior and physiological states during survival-salient events and pleasurable interactions. Even though we are often consciously aware of our current emotional state, such as anger or happiness, the mechanisms giving rise to these subjective sensations have remained unresolved. Here we used a topographical self-report tool to reveal that different emotional states are associated with topographically distinct and culturally universal bodily sensations; these sensations could underlie our conscious emotional experiences. Monitoring the topography of emotion-triggered bodily sensations brings forth a unique tool for emotion research and could even provide a biomarker for emotional disorders.
Abstract
Emotions are often felt in the body, and somatosensory feedback has been proposed to trigger conscious emotional experiences. Here we reveal maps of bodily sensations associated with different emotions using a unique topographical self-report method. In five experiments, participants (n = 701) were shown two silhouettes of bodies alongside emotional words, stories, movies, or facial expressions. They were asked to color the bodily regions whose activity they felt increasing or decreasing while viewing each stimulus. Different emotions were consistently associated with statistically separable bodily sensation maps across experiments. These maps were concordant across West European and East Asian samples. Statistical classifiers distinguished emotion-specific activation maps accurately, confirming independence of topographies across emotions. We propose that emotions are represented in the somatosensory system as culturally universal categorical somatotopic maps. Perception of these emotion-triggered bodily changes may play a key role in generating consciously felt emotions.
We often experience emotions directly in the body. When strolling through the park to meet with our sweetheart we walk lightly with our hearts pounding with excitement, whereas anxiety might tighten our muscles and make our hands sweat and tremble before an important job interview. Numerous studies have established that emotion systems prepare us to meet challenges encountered in the environment by adjusting the activation of the cardiovascular, skeletomuscular, neuroendocrine, and autonomic nervous system (ANS) (1). This link between emotions and bodily states is also reflected in the way we speak of emotions (2): a young bride getting married next week may suddenly have “cold feet,” severely disappointed lovers may be “heartbroken,” and our favorite song may send “a shiver down our spine.”Both classic (3) and more recent (4, 5) models of emotional processing assume that subjective emotional feelings are triggered by the perception of emotion-related bodily states that reflect changes in the skeletomuscular, neuroendocrine, and autonomic nervous systems (1). These conscious feelings help the individuals to voluntarily fine-tune their behavior to better match the challenges of the environment (6). Although emotions are associated with a broad range of physiological changes (1, 7), it is still hotly debated whether the bodily changes associated with different emotions are specific enough to serve as the basis for discrete emotional feelings, such as anger, fear, or happiness (8, 9), and the topographical distribution of the emotion-related bodily sensations has remained unknown.Here we reveal maps of bodily sensations associated with different emotions using a unique computer-based, topographical self-report method (emBODY, Fig. 1). Participants (n = 701) were shown two silhouettes of bodies alongside emotional words, stories, movies, or facial expressions, and they were asked to color the bodily regions whose activity they felt to be increased or decreased during viewing of each stimulus. Different emotions were associated with statistically clearly separable bodily sensation maps (BSMs) that were consistent across West European (Finnish and Swedish) and East Asian (Taiwanese) samples, all speaking their respective languages. Statistical classifiers discriminated emotion-specific activation maps accurately, confirming independence of bodily topographies across emotions. We propose that consciously felt emotions are associated with culturally universal, topographically distinct bodily sensations that may support the categorical experience of different emotions.
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