The Emotional Life of Your Brain

The Brain Basis for Emotion

Every person’s “Emotional Style” is unique, like fingerprints or snowflakes. Your style determines how you react to what life throws at you.

Developing areas of expertise by repetition – such as playing the piano or navigating city streets as a taxi driver – increases activity and patterns in corresponding areas of the brain. A similar increase occurs when you practice skills virtually, because the brain responds to input from the external and internal world. You can think your way to virtuosity and change your emotional style through intentional effort.

Scientists now recognize that emotions form an important aspect of the mind. Six basic emotions – “happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust” and “surprise” – each generate the same corresponding facial expressions worldwide. Negative emotions correlate to increased activity in the right frontal area of the brain while positive emotions correlate to activity in the left frontal area.

The “Six Dimensions”

Emotional style has six dimensions. Individual behavior falls within these dimensions, forming each person’s unique style. Neurologists trace the dimensions to specific...