feelings are what make life worth living from the cheapest Thrills and bassist Pleasures to the highest art and mystical experiences the value of anything comes from how it makes us feel but feelings can also make life unbearable and at their worst they make suicide seem like the only option now as Central to our lives as feelings are we sell them ask what they are it just seems obvious feelings are well feelings yet we use the word feeling to refer to three different types of experience first you feel the outside of your body the warmth of a coffee mug on your hands the icy lashing of a snowstorm on Exposed Skin the pressure of your fingertips as you type on a keyboard these types of feeling are called tactile which comes from the Latin Tangier which provides the root for a related term tangible secondly we use feeling to refer to the sensations emanating from within our bodies we feel the dull pain of an empty stomach the strain of a calf muscle on a steep hike the dry burn of lungs struggling to pump enough oxygen into a body biking uphill we also feel the unmistakable pleasure of an orgasm the pleasant satiation of a well-prepared meal and the irresistible warmth of a crackling fireplace on a cold Winter's day thirdly we use feeling to refer to emotions we feel angry joyous depressed content disgusted compassionate fearful loving compared to the first two usages these emotional feelings seem rather cerebral I mean the warmth of a coffee mug is concrete the relatively high temperature of the liquid is transferred from the mug then flows into your fingertips at which point the sensory receptors in your fingers sense the higher temperature send a message to your brain and you perceive warmth and so too with interoceptive Sensations they have a definite physical cause such as a distended stomach or fatigued muscle but anger Joy fear love these are not physical objects like a ceramic mug or a hard-working muscle so why do we say that we feel emotions again the answer is obvious because emotions feel physical when you're grieving the death of someone you love the pain can feel a lot like getting punched in the stomach or like running out of air and struggling to breathe when you experience the calm contentment of holding loved ones close to you the feeling can approach that of a relaxing massage or a delicious meal many of us might appreciate these comparisons but nevertheless believe that emotions are purely mental that this usage of feeling is actually metaphorical yet if you've ever experienced a panic attack or blind rage you know that emotions can become intensely physical jacking up your heart rate and blood pressure creating tension in your muscles and irritation in your digestive system if you've ever developed ulcers or other bodily manifestations of stress you know that emotional turmoil can burst out of the mind and into the body the reality is that when we talk about emotional feelings we're also talking about interoceptive feelings emotions involve physiology in fact these two varieties of feelings arise from the same neurobiological Foundation the intraoceptive cortex which is responsible for mapping interpreting and experiencing bodily Sensations whether they're physiological or emotional anatomically the introceptive cortex spans two regions the insular cortex and the cingulate cortex like all processes in the brain the interoceptive cortex does not act alone to produce feelings but rather in concert with other brain regions especially the brain stem midbrain and sensory regions the interceptive cortex integrates signals coming from these brain structures about the state of the body the goals of the organism and the context in which it's all playing out the insular cortex or insula for short is especially important when we're talking about the experience of an emotional feeling several years ago the neuroscientist Arthur D Craig proposed a neurobiological model for how the insula creates emotional feelings which has received much empirical support since its publication throughout this video I'll be using Craig's model to explain how the brain generates emotional feelings it begins with the body sensory nerve fibers innervate every tissue organ and patch of Flesh within you each fiber sends signals back to the brain about how things are going in that tiny local area that concerns it does this cell need oxygen does that one need glucose does this blood vessel need to be constricted each nerve fiber is constantly sensing the answer to those kinds of questions and updating the brain about what needs to be done in other words these particular nerves are concerned with maintaining and optimizing the conditions needed to keep the whole system running a process that biologists call homeostasis the sensory fibers don't send this important information about the homeostatic state of the body to just any brain region instead they transmit it up through the spinal cord into the brain stem and then finally into specific nuclei of the thalamus the thalamus keeps these signals organized according to where they were generated in the body thereby creating a homeostatic map of the internal territory of the body neuroscientists refer to this as a somatotopic map because it preserves the organization according to the layout of the body or Soma now it's not clear whether we can yet consciously experience the internal sensations of our body though some scientists believe we can now all scientists agree that the conscious experience certainly occurs by the time we get to the next step that is the insular cortex once the homeostatic map is transmitted to the insular cortex it's combined with information about the tactile Sensations on the outside of the body the body's position in space and what's happening in the immediate outside environment now in addition to that sensory information the homeostatic interceptive information is integrated with signals coming from regions involved in motivation desire and pleasure which include the dopamine-rich regions like the ventral striatum and orbital frontal cortex as well as physiological arousal and that includes regions like the amygdala and hypothalamus which are both crucial for the fight or flight response now finally this complex mixture is integrated with information coming from the medial prefrontal cortex about the self and the social situation and from the lateral prefrontal cortex about goals and plans for the future so feelings coming from the body become emotional once they're integrated with all these other signals but the reverse may also be true bodily feelings may be generated by the insula not in response to actual homeostatic changes but to emotionally relevant thoughts and perceptions for example say the thought of an impending deadline generates a tense feeling in your stomach and you experience this combination as anxiety but what about the other side of emotion the motivational side that is Imagine feeling angry or sad it's not just that there's a distinct feeling combined with a unique mixture of thoughts and grief for example is not just a painful pit in your stomach tied to the thought that someone you love is gone forever there's also a motivational component to it you want to make the pain go away perhaps by going through the classical stages of grief you might deny that they're gone or that anything is the matter or bargain with God or the universe to get them back or after some time you might discover that the only way to let go of the pain is to accept the truth however you choose to cope with it this motivational component of emotional feelings arises in another brain region the singulate cortex one piece of evidence for this comes from studies of physical pain when we feel physical pain a network of brain regions is active including the insular cortex as we've been talking about but like grief pain is accompanied by that same desire to rid ourselves of the feeling that motivational component which makes us want to escape the source of our pain activity in the cingulate cortex is tightly correlated with this motivational component of pain and that fits well with the fact that the singulate cortex has been closely associated with motivation in general for example when the singulate is electrically stimulated subjects experience a free-floating drive to accomplish something to conquer a challenge that lies ahead even when no such challenge is before them so it would appear that the insula allows us to experience emotional feelings whereas the cingulate motivates us to act on those feelings but an important question looms unanswered over this whole discussion of emotion and feelings what is an emotion now there's an incredible amount of disagreement on that question which has resulted in several schools of thought in the science of emotions in episode 5 of our podcast the social brain the neuroscientist Taylor Guthrie and I discussed the three most prominent schools of thought the main difference between them is the degree to which they believe that emotions are genetically hardwired into our brains as opposed to being dependent on cultural norms still all agree that interoception is important for emotions but many questions remain does each emotion have its own characteristic feeling or can the same feeling be attached to opposite emotions are feelings about controlling our Behavior or monitoring our body Are there specific brain circuits that can make us experience rage fear Joy lost and other emotions or are emotions constructed from more basic psychological units like pleasure pain and stress well armed with this understanding of the neural basis of feelings I'll leave you to investigate those questions for yourself a great place to start is the episode of the social brain I just mentioned so check it out okay well that is it for today's episode this episode was written and produced by me Andrew Cooper Sansone thank you so much for watching I'll catch you next time foreign [Music]