An Increased Understanding of Neurobiology :: Neurobiology Biology Health Essays

An Increased Understanding of Neurobiology It is a beautiful day outside, the person you care about just told you they feel the same way, you paid all your bills and still have money left over, and you finished all your work on time, yet you are still in a very crabby mood. Or, it is an awful day out, you just failed an exam, you have a ton of work to finish in too little time, and you were just dumped, still you have a feeling of well-being that you cannot change. We have all been there, our emotions seem to have a mind of their own and we do not know why we are feeling what we are feeling. Philosophers, psychologists, and science fiction writers have been debating the usefulness of emotions for centuries, still we continue to experience them and deal with them as part of our existence as human beings. Neurobiologists have preferred to take the tactic of looking at emotions as something we experience, thus something that should be studied. This tactic has led to some interesting evidence in terms of the usefulness of emotion in our everyday life. Some have found that experiencing the variety of feelings that we do might help in our ability to remember things and in learning about the world around us. If it is the case that emotional information does help us when we remember things and learn, then how do emotions work in the brain? There have been found to be some key structures, each playing a role in the way we experience emotions and what kind of moods are experienced. Still, with all of this information, we still have emotions that we cannot explain given our everyday experience. The increased understanding of neurobiology that we have can be used to explain why we feel what we do, even when the external world cannot. It had long been thought that any research into emotion was a waste of good research efforts. There were many reasons for this, but primarily the idea was that emotions were not scientific enough for science. As time and methods have changed, so has that attitude and now emotions are looked at with slightly more respect and less apprehension about their not being rational. (1) This change in attitude has led to people finding that emotions might actually lead to somewhat useful things. An Increased Understanding of Neurobiology :: Neurobiology Biology Health Essays An Increased Understanding of Neurobiology It is a beautiful day outside, the person you care about just told you they feel the same way, you paid all your bills and still have money left over, and you finished all your work on time, yet you are still in a very crabby mood. Or, it is an awful day out, you just failed an exam, you have a ton of work to finish in too little time, and you were just dumped, still you have a feeling of well-being that you cannot change. We have all been there, our emotions seem to have a mind of their own and we do not know why we are feeling what we are feeling. Philosophers, psychologists, and science fiction writers have been debating the usefulness of emotions for centuries, still we continue to experience them and deal with them as part of our existence as human beings. Neurobiologists have preferred to take the tactic of looking at emotions as something we experience, thus something that should be studied. This tactic has led to some interesting evidence in terms of the usefulness of emotion in our everyday life. Some have found that experiencing the variety of feelings that we do might help in our ability to remember things and in learning about the world around us. If it is the case that emotional information does help us when we remember things and learn, then how do emotions work in the brain? There have been found to be some key structures, each playing a role in the way we experience emotions and what kind of moods are experienced. Still, with all of this information, we still have emotions that we cannot explain given our everyday experience. The increased understanding of neurobiology that we have can be used to explain why we feel what we do, even when the external world cannot. It had long been thought that any research into emotion was a waste of good research efforts. There were many reasons for this, but primarily the idea was that emotions were not scientific enough for science. As time and methods have changed, so has that attitude and now emotions are looked at with slightly more respect and less apprehension about their not being rational. (1) This change in attitude has led to people finding that emotions might actually lead to somewhat useful things.