Brain – Parts Per Billion

Anxiety – Ugly (But Precious) Gift From Evolution

Anxiety serves to prepare a person for threats. Anxiety just like pain is one uncomfortable but effective way to cope up with the adversities in life, that’s how we build strength, resistance and deeper understanding of the surrounding for better and more precisely predictable future.
The remarkable concepts like smoke detector principal and optimal threshold in signal detection theory developed by modern psychologists/ psychiatrists help us to draw a line between a healthy anxiety (adaptive function) and unhealthy anxiety (pathology) and show ways to handle/treat them effectively.

Anxiety’s like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you very far
Jodi Picoult

Survival, Fear, and Anxiety

Every living thing if not have any goal in their lifetime would at least have sole goal of existing, surviving. Nobody wants to die and all of us always yearn to live forever but we know our limitations and hence are always on the quest of justifying the finite existence granted to us. Even if we are certain of the end closing in, our instincts are evolved in such way that many of the times, we bear the ability to cheat death. Humans have further extended cheating the death using science and technology. Technology augmented our lives, reduced the risks of death, created a safe environment to grow, increased our chances of survival.

The fear of death and uncertainty of future is the key driver in our improved survival instincts and excessive use of technology to achieve it. We plan for things in advance, create backup plans if something would go wrong, have risk assessments before the execution, understand and decide according to the cost benefit analysis. That is what makes us humans and also separates from other species (although rest of the surviving species are also smart in their own ways to increase their chances of survival like viruses – but hopefully humans have other ways to overcome them)

So, fear in a way triggers the actions to ensure survival. Anxiety – a sophisticated form of fear which prepares us in advance even before the fear causing scenario is supposed to happen. Simply put anxiety is an anticipatory type of fear to increase the chances of survival.

I am talking about fear and anxiety because they are bugging my mind for many days. Recently I watched Inside Out 2 movie and the it really delivers. The narrative has successfully presented how all emotions play a vital role in creating our personality in whole. Anxiety was new and important emotion presented in this movie. Every moment where anxiety came in focus it was fully relatable to me. Once I was done crying in the end the anxiety never left me (figuratively!), I felt a strong urge to understand the anxiety on deeper levels and what the domain experts have to say about anxiety.

The discussion heron is not a movie review rather I have made some attempt to summarize what the real-world scientists have to say about anxiety. I won’t be giving you the tricks, counseling and recommending any medicines to cure anxiety disorders. (Trained professional, experts are the best people to do that – “I AM NO EXPERT”)

My focus of the discussion is to question why anxiety exists in first place when we have an emotion called fear, another question is how to interpret the anxious emotions and what leads to anxiety disorder, where does the root of anxiety lie and is anxiety a bad or negative emotion? If it is so then why? and if not – then why?

While posing such questions and researching articles I came across some beautiful ideas, experiments and theories established by professionals in the field. I will throw light on these ideas in the coming discussion.

The fear is real! – is it? – Defining anxiety

As I already mentioned that fear of death, the unknown and urge to live long are always fighting with each other. Humans rather every species existing today in nature mastered this battle to some extent and have ridden on chariots of evolution to augment – change themselves to adapt with the surroundings and improve the chances of survival.

A deer completely aware of its surrounding, grazing in the open grass fields can distinguish the rusting of leaves due to winds and rustling due to sudden movements of an apex predator like tiger. When the exams are on top of tomorrow, we are ready to sacrifice the night sleep to crack them (engineers would resonate more with this!) We know that the pain of failing, fear of failing is worse than painfully covering syllabus overnight! The fear is there and the anticipatory response is also there, only the level of sophistication is different.

Why I say sophistication? It is because due to the advancements in our lifestyles humans are rarely exposed to the real life-threatening scenarios like animal do (still today). Our fears are now more anticipatory. I would say most of our fears are now classified as anxiety.

Wikipedia goes like this for anxiety –

“Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events.”

So, the key differentiating aspect between fear and anxiety is the anticipation. Anxiety is a prospective emotion and a forward-looking emotion. Whereas fear is the emotional response to current threat. Fear makes us act immediately; anxiety keeps us ready for future threats. Fear will immediately decide fight or flight whereas anxiety will create plans, strategies for both and also calculate which one is more probable. (now you can appreciate why anxiety is more intense in over-thinkers, the analysis paralysis is one mild example of this.)

Anxiety is also an emotion important from evolutionary perspective as it has helped the current existing species to remain existent. The ability to anticipate future and preparing for it in advance gives competitive edge in survival.

Why Is Anxiety Good?

While reading about anxiety I came across a very good paper by Dr. Randolph M. Nesse.

Randolph M. Nesse is a Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Psychology in University of Michigan. The ideas and theory he created to understand and identify anxiety and its intensity are very important and interesting.

Dr. Ness developed the smoke detector principle to control and quantify the medication used to fight with anxiety disorder. (He poses very simple but important question the opening of the paper that “Is he medicating his patients too much? is he harming them?”) The fundamental doubt Dr. Ness had was if the anxiety is evolved during evolution to improve our chances of survival, then why are we forced to reduce its symptoms and effects? Why are we using medications, therapies to reduce these symptoms, effects of anxiety. What if the patient is too anxious for given thing and that thing is too real to happen but the doctor dumbed that emotion down? (Dr. Ness calls it down-regulating the mechanisms causing anxiety)

The core of his thinking is that if we keep on “down-regulating” our anxiety which is an evolutionary gift to us, we might never be able to gauge the future in better way and prepare for it in advance to improve our chances of survival. (this is an exaggeration of the scenario but it proves a point)

This calls for the quantification of anxiety. Which Dr. Ness did through the smoke detector principle.

The Smoke Detector Principle – How Much Anxiety Is Too Much?

Dr. Ness in another paper talks about the mechanism which is a feed-back system between the animal and its surroundings, which selects the emotional response to improve the chances of survival. The emotions we have today are the result of such evolution to maintain “homeostasis” – the balance among our bodily system to survive and function properly.

According to his ideas, anxiety works like a smoke detector.

The anxiety response is always trying to maximize the chances of survival and escape from a life-threatening situation. When we set a smoke detector it will go off even when the fire is not that extreme or if there is just some smoke which can be a controllable one. The smoke detector is designed to never miss a single fire causing situation. This ensures complete confidence in smoke detector that it will save people from every life taking fire scenario. But, it’s the same mechanism of smoke detector which forces people to evacuate frequently even when the fire or smoke where controllable or life threatening.

The frequent emergency evacuation even when it is not required is the same problem with the extreme intensity cases of anxiety. Always having armor ready for combat may sometimes make the soldier to lose the agility.

The patients with anxiety disorder have lowered sense of real threat. Their system triggers too many false alarms.

Dr. Ness established various techniques to quantify the levels of anxiety. The responses from anxiety include increased heart rate, rise in certain bodily chemicals – stress hormone secretion which can be easily measured as signals using instruments. Thus, the smoke detector principal paved a way to quantify the anxiety and understand what triggers the anxiety disorders in patients. It helps to understand how and why a level of anxiety is healthy in normal person and what level of anxiety is unhealthy and needs drug administration, therapy, how it can be administered by altering the setting within and around the person.

The core reasons why we need not to be intensely anxious about common life threats are as follows as Dr. Ness explains in his papers:

Regulatory mechanisms have tendency to make errors and be extra defensive about situations
We do not need to always be extra defensive to avoid given threat. (A machine gun in a bulletproof enclosure is not required to kill a mosquito.)
Our body and surroundings have multiple layers of defense for almost all common threats. We are evolved and have survived in that way.
Our environment is much safer than it was at the time we evolved

Types of Anxiety Disorders

Now that we have understood what is the nature of anxiety and what is its mechanism. Here are some important anxiety disorders to outline. Huge amount of information is available in literature, internet websites on these:

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) – too much worrying about ordinary things, problems like money, work, health, relations, family, and anything possible or imaginable, it may not exist in reality.
Hypochondriasis – People suffering from this often worry about the health condition when nothing is wrong with their body. The word comes from feeling of stomach pain the person experiences even when everything is alright.
Specific phobia – fear of anything but specific without any reason. It’s the fear for certain thing even when it does not pose threat.
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) – In this scenario people intensely fear the public situations, humiliations, embarrassments, criticisms.
Separation anxiety disorder (SepAD) – People in this case intensely fear the loss of person or a place
Agoraphobia – it is fear of being in situation where there is no exit door, or escape strategy. Fear of using public transportation, being in large crowds are some examples.
Panic disorder – these are outburst of all the collective or intensive fears, they come quickly and last for short time.
Selective mutism (SM) – in this case the person is extremely fearful of initiating a conversation, does not speak to specific people or in specific situations or conditions even when they are forced to talk by humiliation or mocking.

Post traumatic syndrome disorder (PTSD) and Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) were once classified under anxiety disorders (now not under anxiety disorder in DSM – Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders)

Signal Detection Theory For Interpreting ‘Anxiety Like Responses’

One good paper in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry by Bateson et al. shows how the smoke detector principal can be used to decide the boundaries of different levels of “anxiety like-responses”. This paper talks about signal detection theory and optimal threshold. The beauty of this paper for me is the mathematical model it establishes to explain psychological events. A single formula will help you understand the difference between normal anxiety and anxiety disorder.

With the smoke detector principal, we can now appreciate that not every common threat needs full armored protection. The signal detection theory in this paper shows where a person draws line when they overestimate or underestimate anxiety.

It talks about “optimal threshold” to show a threat response in given situation. Optimal threshold is a mathematical parameter which is function of probability of the occurrence real event and vulnerability of the individual.

The signal detection theory says that the superposition of response signals for given background noise and response signal from real threat give us the quantified judgement of how intensely the anxiety is triggered compared to the practicality of the threat – this quantified judgement is called optimal threshold (λ). Lower the threshold more intensely the anxiety will be triggered for given disturbance – background noise.

Figure 1 : Signal detection problem, how the optimal threshold can be calculated. (Credit: Anxiety: An Evolutionary Approach, 2011, Bateson et al., Canadian Journal of Psychiatry)

Equation 1: optimum threshold (Credit: Anxiety: An Evolutionary Approach, 2011, Bateson et al.,Canadian Journal of Psychiatry)

Here,

λ = optimal threshold

p_nt= probability that there is no threat

p_t= probability that there is real threat

w_fa= cost of false alarm

w_miss = cost of a miss

Once this equation comes in focus the discussion becomes interesting. The ratio of p_nt to p_t mathematically quantifies how practical the threat is. The ratio of w_fa to w_miss mathematically quantifies what will be the cost if the anxiety trigger is accepted or rejected – will the subject live or die. This ratio shows how we trigger anxiety response. If the cost of responding is nothing for even a simple threat scenario, we will choose to trigger that response, same would happen if the cost of losing is ultimately the loss of life, we would trigger any possible anxiety response to avoid it. The authors call this ratio as individual’s vulnerability.

The ratio (p_nt/p_t) can be seen like this. If the surrounding really is hostile and consists of events which cause many life altering events than the safety ensuring events then the p_t (probability of threat) will be way higher than p_nt (probability of no threat and safer environment). In war situation where multiple bombings, gun firings are happening around you the probability of threat happening (p_t) is way high than it not happening (p_nt). The optimal threshold will drop immediately and anxiety triggered will be very high.

The ratio (w_fa / w_miss) can be seen like this. If the person is way stronger to handle given threat, then the person will need no effort, investment or cost to trigger any reaction alarm to even a false threat. Consider the example where you are about to be bit by mosquito, you know the efforts to slap many times until the mosquito dies are not worthless, you will try many times to kill it even when you know it will swiftly escape, you are less vulnerable in this scenario. But now when you are about to be killed by John Wick (!?) you know for sure that even a pencil will do the job for him, any environment is hostile for you, you are vulnerable here, the value of losing life (w_miss)is way high than the cost of attempts to save it (w_fa). Your optimal threshold will immediately drop down thus triggering intense anxiety.

Once you generate enough data for such optimal frequencies you can easily distinguish the healthy anxiety responses and anxiety disorders. I loved how these two factors (probability of threat and vulnerability of an individual) can predict the levels of anxiety in a person. This equation explains and can also quantify why pregnant women have heightened awareness of their surroundings, why people get insomniac after constant mental stress, why restless people are always in the mode of action and fight, why reclusive people hesitate to visit foreign, unknown places.

Your Surroundings and Mindset Matter!

Figure 2 : Three levels of vulnerability, here optimal threshold and probability of event can be correlated for difference in the anxiety responses (Credit: Anxiety: An Evolutionary Approach, 2011, Bateson et al., Canadian Journal of Psychiatry)

It is really interesting what the authors have achieved and established in this research. They compared three different levels of vulnerability and explained them using given plot. The thing to highlight here for anxiety disorders is that they emerge from the environments which always keep on presenting high probabilistic practically threatening scenarios. The anxiety disorders also emerge when the individual feels more vulnerable.

Higher the vulnerability lower will be the optimal threshold and intense will be the anxiety response.

As shown in research, in the uncertain times of Covid-19 people who were locked in their home had no disorders, were not exposed to the virus also felt anxious and faced some anxiety disorders because of the environment they were in.

If the person feels less vulnerable and stronger then even for given strong life-threatening events the optimal threshold will be higher thus the anxiety triggered will be lower.

Are you noticing where this is going?

This is a mathematical model which shows how a healthy, supportive, and safe environment and also a strong mindset and better judgment of reality is important for handling challenging situations.

For a person suffering from anxiety disorder, it becomes very important to make sure that they know that they are in a safer environment and are cared for. It is very important to make them feel safe and understood. Creating a system of critical thinking and reasoning can also help the person to have a sense of strength and high resistance to vulnerability, this also goes for physical strength. The vulnerability is not only mental it is also physical when it comes to reality.

You will now appreciate why teenagers and trauma patients are more exposed to anxiety disorders. Mostly and generally in teenagers it is due to the uncertainty of many new things happening with them simultaneously and in trauma patients it’s the constant bombardment of life-threatening events in hostile environments.

Conclusion

Anxiety serves to prepare a person for threats. The emotion called anxiety is an evolutionary gift to ensure long survival of our species but as it is also related to our primitive instincts, we mostly let anxiety overpower other emotions in seemingly safer scenarios. Strategy and anticipation are the gifts of anxiety but if overused they will end up in imparting unnecessary caution and overprotective attitude which inhibits adaptation to changes there by slowing evolution of our species. Anxiety just like pain is one uncomfortable but effective way to cope up with the adversities in life, that’s how we build strength, resistance and deeper understanding of the surrounding for better and more precisely predictable future.

The remarkable concepts like smoke detector principal and optimal threshold in signal detection theory developed by modern psychologists/ psychiatrists help us to draw a line between a healthy anxiety (adaptive function) and unhealthy anxiety (pathology) and ways to handle/ treat them effectively.

These theories show how we can quantify seemingly intangible emotions like anxiety and way to handle them. If you can measure something effectively you can control and predict it effectively. All credit goes to such brilliant minds!

References, Image sources and further reading:

Love is in the Brain

The heart always gets credited for the feelings of love but it is the brain which plays the most significant role. Neuroscientists have made attempts to interpret the emotions of love by closely studying the events in the brains of lovers. A study in neuroscience shows how acts of expressing love through embracing, kissing, and conversing about common experiences positively influences our brains. It also indicates why and how men may feel embraces deeper and more emotional than women, how an emotional speech creates similar neural effects as the neural effects during kissing.

Neuroscience of the languages of love

Kiss, speech and embrace are the most common languages of love

Background – What is love? What is an emotion?

Emotions are one inseparable part of human life rather every living thing. They can be attributed as the response we generate for the interactions we have with our surrounding – a response to various stimuli. Responding to the events/ interactions is one important way of communication for living things. Out of these responses, physical responses are generally very easy to notice and interpret but at the same time the emotional responses are more complicated, sometimes difficult to even notice and interpret. Body language mostly gives away the what’s going in a person’s head, what they are thinking (like most of us have a tell when we are uncomfortable/ nervous or are lying). Understanding body language can give straightforward answers about person’s condition and personality but it is always difficult to gauge what exactly the person is feeling in given condition.

Love is one of the most important and at the same time the most exploited feelings we living things have. Love is the feeling which we can connect with anything real and imaginary that is there in the universe (trust me, this is not inferred from the pop culture philosophy) There are more things to love than to hate for everyone of us. For the sake of generalization, love brings in the comfort, safety and hope for the survival of every species. Love for certain things can push the individual to do something extraordinary – good (because it can create purpose irrespective of the situations and challenges in life) or bad (that is exactly why love is the most exploited emotion, you can make people do wrong things just for the sake of love).

Love language

Even though love is the most general emotion all of us have (like love for something, some person, some song, some place, some season, some animal, love for everything); the love between couples – romantic couples remain always at the focal point. The love between couples is not important because pop culture, poets, painters, singers, saints mentioned it repeatedly everywhere; it is important because it is what makes our lives less artificial. The love romantic couple can have, affects the future of society in every possible and productive way – it also ensures diversity – randomness in species. As we are highly expressive and responsive species, communication is the most important part of our life especially the love life. When two people from different backgrounds come together in the name of love it becomes very important as how they express their love for each other. Today we call it “the love language”. Some couples love to talk a lot with each other, some like to sit in silence together, some always feel cuddly, some would be always staring into each other’s eyes, some would travel together, some like to cook together or for other, some like to eat together, some are always pulling pranks, some would peel orange for the others, some would send flowers, some would be writing poems, singing songs, some would always fight (yes…, you read that and accepted it). You get it; every couple has their own (sometimes weird) love language and communicating in this certain language deepens the relationship.

Brain vs heart – Neuroscience of love

Even though heart has been attributed to the origin of the feeling of love due to various reason, its original job is to just pump the blood. Nothing interesting happens in the heart of a person in love than in their brain. Brain surely is the epicenter for the study of love and how we feel when we are in love. Just like love, our brain is the most complicated thing we are yet to understand fully. Neuroscientists are always trying to figure out what generates certain set of emotions and responses. Love is one such important emotion which is also an attractive subject for them. Its association with every aspect of our life, its complexity and simplicity at the same time has always attracted scientists who are trying to understand human behavior. (love hasn’t spared the brainiacs too.)

Modern neuroscience is blurring the lines between the intangibility of emotions especially love and the tangible – physical parameters like electricity (synapse, wave-forms), chemicals (hormones, neurotransmitters). From providing shock to certain part of the brain to see which muscle it twitches to enabling the paralyzed people to walk again through brain implants, neuroscience has had many quantum leaps.

How does a neuroscientist interpret love?

I think every person who is in love can tell what it is but it will always have a touch of subjectivity, thus a neuroscientist is always the most qualified person to create an objective fact on the emotion of love.

Today we will see an interesting study in neuroscience about the emotions in romantic couples. Before going into the details and the conclusions of the study, it is important to roughly get the hold of some concepts neuroscientists used to interpret their results.

Our brain is made of approximately 100 billion neurons whose network is always firing some electrical signals to generate responses and create memories. The measurement of such electrical signals and their interpretation is important aspect of studying brain.

fMRI – functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

It is found that when there is a neural activation in brain, the blood flow increases in that region. This change in blood flow can be monitored using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

De-oxygenated hemoglobin in blood is paramagnetic (attracted by external magnetic field) and oxygenated hemoglobin in blood is diamagnetic (repelled by external magnetic field). Producing a strong magnetic field around brain and monitoring their interactions with the magnetic fields generated during blood flow are measured in MRI. Such measurements require bulky and specialized instruments with controlled conditions.

fMRI shows what part of brain gets activated from increased blood flow

fMRI machine is huge thus creates limited experimental environments

Electroencephalography (EEG) – it is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. It monitors the electrical signals from brain using electrodes on scalp instead of measuring the changes in magnetic fields. The EEG devices are now very lightweight and portable thus they have less influence on the neural activity of the subject under observation. The portability also widens the test environments for the subjects under observation.

EEG can be used to interpret the signals from the outer surface (cerebral cortex) of the brain as the electrodes are put on the scalp. It is difficult to understand what is happening inside the brain from the signals of EEG although they will always be interfering with the overall signals sensed by the electrode at the scalp.

An EEG system is highly portable to collect neural data

International 10-20 system – It is an internationally accepted template for putting electrodes proportionately on the scalp of head. This ensures homogeneous observations and reproducibility of the results during EEG. 10 and 20 refer to the percentage of the gap between the electrodes meaning the electrodes are placed at 10% or 20% of the total distance between front – back of the skull (called as nasion and inion respectively) or total left-right distance.

International 10-20 system to locate the electrodes of EEG system

A good, healthy person will show waves of certain frequencies according to their conditions. These frequencies are between 1 to 30 Hz and the amplitude varies between 20 to 100 micro volt. The frequencies are divided as follows:

Alpha waves – alpha waves have frequency between 8-12 Hz and are observed when a person is relaxed in a wakeful condition. These are mainly attributed to activity in parietal and occipital lobe of the brain. When a relaxed person opens their eyes, it is observed that their alpha activity reduces and beta activity increases. Alpha waves are produced when you’re awake but your mind is in a resting state.

Beta waves – beta waves have frequency above 12 till 30 Hz. Beta waves are associated with intense mental activity like doing some arithmetic calculations, making inferences from given data, being busy, focused on something. The frontal area of brain shows significant beta activity in such wakeful instances.

Gamma waves – these are the fastest brain waves with frequency between 30-80 Hz. They are attributed to deep thinking and state of high focus. Generally, people with high IQ show more gamma activity; lower gamma activity is attributed to memory and learning problems, short attention span.

Delta waves – delta waves are associated with frequencies between 0.5 – 4 Hz

Theta waves – theta waves are associated with frequencies between 4-7 Hz

Theta and delta waves are not observed in wakeful state. If delta and theta waves are observed in wakefulness then it indicates brain dysfunction.

Output wave-forms from the electrodes of an EEG system

Lateralization of brain – We have come across one misleading fact that we only use certain fraction/ percentage of our brain in routine activities. (the popular number is 5-20%) This popular but wrong fact could be attributed to the idea of lateralization of brain. (Sci-Fi movies have exploited this wrong fact already)

Generally, almost all areas of every healthy person’s brain are always active. But, certain cognitive functions or neural functions (like movement of body parts, thinking, calculating, watching, tasting) are associated to either of the hemisphere of the brain (left or right hemisphere). Although brain as a whole is always active, certain activities/ functions activate one hemisphere more that the another one. Simply put, there is difference in brain signals between right and left hemisphere during a cognitive function. This dominance of brain signal from one “side” shows lateralization of brain. One side will be more activated in brain for given activity.

Asymmetry indices (AI) – So, this heightened activity from one side of brain is measured by taking difference of the signal power of the brain waves from left and right hemisphere.

Increased asymmetry index indicates that the signals in right hemisphere are getting inhibited, restricted. Thus, left hemisphere especially left frontal activity in brain is increased.

Decreased asymmetry index means that the signals in left hemisphere are getting inhibited and thereby right hemisphere is more activated.

Simply put, more the asymmetry index more is the activity in left part of the brain.

There are two main theories on how our brain is lateralized. One is Valence Model (VM) and another is Right Hemisphere Hypothesis (RHH).

VM – According to valence model, every emotion has a valence meaning a tendency to be preferable – positive and rewarding or not preferable – negative and aversion inducing. The positive, rewarding emotions are processed in left hemisphere and negative, punishing emotions are processed in right hemisphere of the brain.

RHH – Right Hemispherical Hypothesis says that whatever may the emotions be – positive or negative, rewarding or punishing – all are processed in right hemisphere of the brain.

Neuroscientists are yet to reach a consensus on which of these two ideas are right. Certain observations are supported by VM and others are supported by RHH. It’s not about what is wrong and what is right, it is about which model explains given dataset better and predicts better.

Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) – this is one of the chemicals – a neurotransmitter which inhibits/ blocks certain neural signals thereby is responsible for creating calmness. If GABA is released more, we feel calmer and more relaxed. The opposite effect i.e. restlessness, excitement is generated by glutamate. For a healthy brain balance between GABA and Glutamate is important.

*gamma*-aminobutyric acid – neurotransmitter of calmness

Glutamate is the main excitatory and GABA the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the mammalian cortex. The prescription drugs for reducing restlessness/ improving calmness ensure high levels of GABA in our central nervous system.

**Glutamic acid aka glutamate** – neurotransmitter of excitement

Now that we have understood certain basic ideas to understand the experiment, let us see how certain languages of love in romantic couples affect their neural responses.

The Experiment

The neuroscientists studied three conditions in romantic couples namely – speech, hug and kiss.

The participating romantic partners were asked to wear the EEG system to record the brain signal during the experiment. Scientists recorded a baseline – a neutral state for speech, hug and kiss. Then the emotional states were recorded through certain assigned tasks.

In neutral state for speech, one of the partners listened to a generic weather report, whereas in the emotional state for speech the partner listened to a recording of their partner reading an emotional shared life experience.

In neutral state for hugging/ embracing the partner hugged a pillow while the another being absent and in emotional embrace, they hugged each other.

In neutral state for kissing one partner kissed their hand and in emotional state the partners kissed each other.

Why this experimental setup is important?

According to the authors of this paper, most of the studies to understand the brain activities are always performed in controlled setup which conditions the brain signals in a set template. The observations may create certain insights but are less close to the reality as they were not observed in real life conditions. Authors claim that this method to actually measure the brain signals in real life scenarios creates more relevant, closer to real life dataset. The responses in such setup are more natural. That is why they claim this experiment having more “ecological validity”

The authors make a great attempt to understand the main and most preferred language of love in romantic couples i.e., kissing, embracing, speaking shared experiences. It will be really interesting to see what “flashes” we have when we are experiencing such events.

Observations – looking from a neuroscientist’s perspective

Following are the key observations authors present in this paper:

Participants were more positive after executing the behavioral tasks.
Brain gets lateralized during emotional processing.
High asymmetry index in front lobe electrodes was found during emotional kissing compared to neutral kissing. Researchers found high alpha AI during emotional (real/ organic) kissing than neutral (artificial) kissing baseline.
Found lower alpha AI during speech.
Higher AI in kissing and emotional speech.
Researchers didn’t find overall effects in alpha or beta for embracing. Only males showed higher beta AI in the embracing condition.

Conclusions

Pardon my oversimplification for the sake of understanding.

The first observation is the easiest to understand. Kissing, hugging, and telling a shared memory/ experience of love surely makes the romance to flourish more (duh!)
The lateralization of brain means that certain emotions are flagged in one of the hemispheres of the brain. It’s not like all the emotions activate only one side of the brain.
This one is interesting. High alpha asymmetry index during kissing means that left brain is more activated during kissing. The authors put forward that this is related to release of GABA molecules in right hemisphere which inhibit the neural signals thereby create a calming effect. Valence model says that left hemisphere processes positive and rewarding emotions. So, this observation shows that kissing surely creates a positive effect in the brain of the romantic couples. Higher left hemispherical activity is attributed to more positivity in a study. It is important observation of high alpha asymmetry because its opposite i.e., lower alpha activity is linked with suicidal tendencies in depression as observed in a study.
The authors found that the VM theory holds best to explain events in frontal part of the brain whereas the RHH theory can explain the posterior events in brain. That is exactly why low alpha AI in romantic/ emotional speech cannot be directly correlated negative emotions which the Valence Model says. Rather according to the RHH theory the speech invokes strong right hemispherical activity. The authors found an observation to link VM and RHH theories according to the regions of brain considered for discussion. Both theories are not completely wrong but are successful when implemented to specific region of the brain. Simply put, it is not just about preference to left or right hemisphere – it is also about whether the activity is in front or back portion of the brain.
High asymmetry indices during kissing and emotional speech show how strongly they affect the lovers. Emotional speech is as effective as kissing. (it’s like kissing your lover’s brain with your emotional words!)
This one is also one more interesting observation. As there are no significant effects in alpha or beta asymmetries during hugging activity, it means the hugging is less effective than kissing or emotional speech. But the authors present a catch here! They found a sex specific observation. It says, high beta AI in males during embracing. High beta AI is linked with increased emotional, cognitive processing. This means that men consider hugging more emotional than women. Women process hugging as a casual act but men consider it more thoughtful especially when they are hugging the existing and well-familiar female partner. Authors attribute this to the fact that women generally hug each other (female-female hug) more than men do (male-male hug).

What does this mean to common person?

The experiment authors performed was really interesting and was closer to the real-life conditions. If you want more interesting details on how what and why the experiment was designed in a certain way and how the results were interpreted, I have provided the link at the end. Going through this article puts front some really deep insights on how love, romance affects our brain. How these languages to express love create a deep connection between lovers.

The authors have tried to remain as objective as possible. But, again pardon my oversimplification, here is what one can understand from this experiment:

Having emotional discussions with your partner is as effective as kissing your partner. No wonder people resort to poetry, music, and literature to express their love. The more you are able to express your love for your partner the more positively it is going to influence your brain thereby you. You also feel better for yourself if you can express your love to your partner. It is like the act loving your partner is providing strength to yourself. Maybe this is how lovers become strong mentally. (No wonder couples madly in love are ready to fight the whole world!) Kissing your romantic partner has calming effect on you mental state. (I think almost no one needs explanation on that! But don’t forget that speech is equally potent)

And finally, men need more hugs compared to women! Although hugging is a common act in society, men are highly emotional when it comes to hugging. So, this is an advice not only for women but also for men and especially for men that you hug your bro, your buddy whenever you feel like expressing your love for them.

Our brain being one of the least understood wonders of the universe has always tricked us in spite of being the most vital part of our existence. The insights from such experiments in neuroscience with this closeness to reality bring more clarity in the ways we handle our relationships. We definitely owe thanks to the authors/ researchers involved in such studies for their valuable insights.

Reference article –

Investigating real-life emotions in romantic couples: a mobile EEG study – Packheiser, J., Berretz, G., Rook, N. et al.