What are our emotions? Being sad, angry, happy… is it the same for everyone, everywhere in the world? And how do we know if these emotions arise from a physiological effect or are the consequence of what is happening around us? The question of the origin of emotions is an intrigue for neuroscience.
Initially, it was the concept of the innate and universal origin of emotions based on the theories of Charles Darwin, who dominated. But, faced with the observation that emotions are not defined in the same way in all cultures, and that the boundaries between categories (joy, sadness, anger, etc.) are not the same throughout the world, this perspective has continued to evolve. A so-called hypothesisconstructionist” of emotions has thus developed over the last decades. According to this theory, our emotions are “concepts” acquired in childhood and which we continue to acquire throughout our lives, according to our experiences. and our environment.
But robust data, from brain imaging and clinical practice, are still lacking to confirm this theory. A recent study published in the journal Brain provides some answers.
To decide between the two currents of thought, Inserm researcher Maxime Bertoux and the team from the “Neuropsychology and Imaging of Human Memory” laboratory studied 16 patients suffering from a rare neurodegenerative disease, “semantic dementia. These patients do not have the capacity to memorize the knowledge acquired about the world and about language.
Difficulty recognizing observed emotions
“Patients have difficulty mobilizing what they have learned throughout life, for example remembering that Paris is the capital of Franceillustrate the researchers. They also have an inability to identify everyday objects and to remember their functioning or their usefulness, or to understand the meaning of words.
So from there, if the emotions are innate and of organic origin, and not linked to societal concepts, these sufferers should express and recognize them like anyone else.
To find out, they asked patients about their conceptual knowledge of 4 emotions: anger, pride, surprise and embarrassment. For example, faced with photos and videos, the patients had to guess which emotion was represented or give synonyms for such and such an emotion. If these questions were easy to answer for healthy patients, patients with semantic dementia had more difficulty responding.
This observation allowed the researchers to answer their question: where do emotions come from? According to them, they come mainly from social learning from childhood. To recognize an emotion, we need codes, knowledge. In addition, the perception of emotions is linked to our knowledge of language. Brain images have also made it possible to support their theory over the tests carried out on patients with semantic dementia.
Beyond understanding the origin of emotions, this work is also of interest in the clinical field for these numerous psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases, which lead to emotional disturbances.
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