Unconscious Emotion and the Brain

Recent research

Discoveries in Neuroscience rarely make headlines, so most of us are unaware that some recent discoveries have led to some simple and effective ways to improve our quality of life. Two areas of research are of particular interest. One line of research has shown how and where memories are stored in the brain. This knowledge gives us a way to address a problem we all have. We often experience a “split” between our intellectual knowledge of how we should behave and our actual response. Our mental image of ourselves, who we think we are, and the way we behave, do not always match up. This may well be because emotional memories and cognitive memories are stored in a different parts of the brain.

Another line of research has focused on how to make changes in our experience of life and our behavior by working with the brain’s electrical activity or EEG. Thousands of academics and clinicians have been searching for ways to give us simpler and faster ways to deal with emotions or behavior that we find problematic.

Emotional Memories

Research carried out by Dr Joseph LeDoux and the New York University Center for Neuroscience has mapped out the some of the biological processes that generate our behavior. Dr. LeDoux has established that there are separate neural pathways for what he calls emotional memories (as distinguished from memories about emotion), memories that trigger the physiological responses that can wash over us without our having the least idea why.

Our brains have evolved a two track system to enable us to act more quickly to a threatening situation. One pathway leads to the cortex, the part of our brain responsible for conscious decision making. The other pathway leads to the amygdala, part of the limbic system, the so called “reptilian” part of our brain. Dr. LeDoux discovered that the same biochemical processes are at work recording our memories, but that we experience them much differently depending on which part of the brain gets activated by them.

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emotional memories

Two systems in the brain

In a speech co-sponsored by the Smithsonian Associates,
Dr. LeDoux states:

“What determines the peculiar quality of different kinds of memories is not the molecules that do  the storing but, instead, the systems in which those molecules act. If they act in the  hippocampal system (in the cortex), the memories recorded are factual and accessible to  our consciousness. If they act in the amygdala system, they are emotional and largely  inaccessible to our conscious awareness.

You need the cortex for high level perception in order to distinguish one kind of music from  another for example, or to distinguish between two speech sounds. But you don’t need the  cortex to carry out some …emotional learning. Thus we can have emotional reactions to something without knowing what we’re responding to, even as we start responding to it. In  other words, we’re dealing with the unconscious processing of emotion. …What we are saying is that unconscious emotions are probably the rule rather than the exception (italics  added). We all know there are many times in normal, day-to-day experience when we  don’t understand where our emotions are coming from, why we feel happy, sad, afraid”.

How much control do we have?

The practical ramifications of these discoveries in our daily lives are profound. All of us prefer to believe that we know ourselves, are aware of what we are feeling, and are in control of our lives. Yet this new information suggests just the opposite, that our actions are constantly influenced by emotion that never rises into our conscious awareness. Of course we can see it when others act in silly, illogical, or annoying ways, but it is much more distressing when we find ourselves acting in ways we know are not good for us, yet somehow we can’t stop.

Dr. LeDoux goes on to state:

“We’re running around with this amygdala that’s designed to detect danger and respond to it.   Once the amygdala is turned on, it can influence information processing in the cortex from  the earliest stages onward, but only the later stages of cortical processing affect the amygdala. In other words, even though communication goes two ways, it’s not equally  effective in both directions. In general, the projections from the amygdala to the cortex are  much stronger than vice versa. If we think of the routes from the amygdala to the cortex  as superhighways, then those from the cortex to the amygdala are narrow back roads.”

Origin of "stress"

For those of us coping with the stresses of modern life, this is not good news. Not only are our daily actions influenced by emotions stored outside our conscious awareness, the very structure of our brains ensures that those emotions are more important in determining our actions than our conscious thoughts. This system worked well for millions of years when our survival was threatened and an unconscious or “instinctive” reaction could save a few precious seconds and perhaps our lives. It may be less functional today when the thought of giving a speech in front of an audience evokes the same physiological response in us as the sight of a saber toothed cat did in our ancestors.

Since so much of what we do on a daily basis is influenced by these unconscious memories, it is no wonder that we use the generic term “stress” to describe the results of this reactivation of unconscious emotion in our lives. We know something is going on, but it is stored outside of conscious awareness. Frequently we have only vague phrases like “pressure at work”, or “things are always moving so fast” to point to the problem.

New technology

Fortunately, along with the bad news about the location of emotional memories, other researchers have been uncovering ways to influence brain activity directly. Since the 1970’s, researchers have been establishing the correlation between electrical activity in the brain and our daily experience. It is only in the last 5 years that truly effective ways of inducing changes in the brain without the use of medication have become available.

Our brains are a marvel of subtlety and sophistication. With the aid of computers, we are now able to influence the electrical activity of the brain as it is occurring. When done effectively, this is almost invisible to the conscious mind; we just start to relax and can’t even say why. Over time our brains learn to be able to accept new stimuli more easily. As our brains become more flexible, they also become calmer and don’t work as hard.

It is now possible to provide stimulation directly to the brain, in the form of precisely timed pulses of low intensity light, which has the effect of calming the electrical activity in the brain associated with stressful or unpleasant experience. To put it another way, we can now work specifically with the brain activity that is associated with depression, anxiety, and stress, resulting in a reduction or elimination of symptoms. Even if a person has not had success with other forms of treatment.

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