Science of Emotions and Thought

Abstract

S cience of E motions and T hought B S J Manali Sawant The beneficial effects of positive thinking have been extoled by numerous proverbs, such as “Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.” We have often been told to have an optimistic outlook throughout our lives, and the notion of the power of thought has been ingrained in our minds ever since we were young. The function of the brain plays a key role in how thoughts are generated and habits are formed. Numerous scientists have tried to make sense of how consciousness is created by brain activity, and some have even explored how thoughts and the absence of thoughts (meditation) affect activity in the brain. Furthermore, repeated conscious acts can turn into habits due to the brain’s ability to slightly alter its physical structure. The complex nature of consciousness and the power of thought in the physical world has and raised questions in both the scientific and nonscientific worlds. A controversial documentary-style film, What the bleep do we know?, aimed at connecting the quantum mechanics to thought processes and bravely stated that our collective consciousness can directly change reality. In other words, our internal thoughts, whether positive or negative, have the power to alter actual events in the world outside, whether we physically intend to or not. While there is much controversy behind whether such a theory is factually correct, many researchers have tried to discover the physical mechanism of how such a phenomenon would occur. Though the film was targeted at the general audience, it discusses concepts such as “an alternate universe” and “the mystery of the direction of time”, raising many questions, without perhaps providing complete answers to all of them. Understanding the structure and function of the brain is essential in order to investigate the physical means by which thoughts may be able to affect our lives. Research shows that electrical activity is present in the human brain before birth until after death. The electrical activity can be measured through the scalp using electrodes in a procedure known as encephalography (Tufts). A device called a polygraph displays the continuous changes in voltage over time. While EEG is normally used to diagnose brain diseases and sleep disorders, it is also a crude indicator of the relative mental state of the patient, which can be noted by observing the amplitude and frequency distribution of the EEG. For example, while alpha waves are associated with a relaxed, but awake state, beta waves are associated with an alert Figure 1. and more active mental Electroencephalography state (Tufts). (EEG) is a commonly used Since raw EEG technique in study of the data only provides human brain. general, non-specific information about one’s mental state it is difficult to study “moment-by- moment human cognitive activity [such as] reading, listening to music, or watching T.V.” (Tufts) using raw EEG data. However, event-related potentials (ERPs) can be obtained by selecting the part of the EEG during the exact time interval a specific activity is taking place or a stimulus is invoked and using signal processing techniques to eliminate non-event activity. Examples of various activities include listening to a specific musical note and viewing a picture or word. By zoning into a particular activity, the ERP differentiates itself from the background EEG, because it has a “more consistent morphological structure” (Tufts). However, since the amplitude of an ERP (1 -10 microvolts) is much smaller than the background EEG (10-100 microvolts) that comprises all brain activity, ERPs are hard to spot in the raw EEG data. When an object is seen, for example, the information captured by the retina of the eye“is scattered and distributed throughout the network”(McFadden 2002) of neurons in the brain. While each neuron contains a modest piece of information, perhaps the alignment or color of a line comprising the image, there is no one single neuron that contains enough information to decode the entire image. How an entire image or object is perceived from separate areas of 1 • B erkeley S cientific J ournal • E motions and T hought • V olume 15 • I ssue 1