The Neuroscience of Emotions
The Neuroscience study of emotions raises complex questions: What are emotions? How are they formed? Are there specific emotional circuits for different feelings?
It is a fascinating journey of neural-activity, chemicals, body-mind connection, and receptors in the brain. It's extremely important in the context of Difficult Change because (among other things), certain emotional involvement can block or support change acquisition and for change to occur, emotions often have to change.
Thanks to Neuroscience, we know emotional response patterns, even very deep ones, can be reprogramed to better support us. We know some basic feelings are "pre-programed" while others are formed in the context of our unique experiences (responding to "emotional-knowings" and predictions).
Understanding Neuroscience models allows us to support people to develop new emotional responses to discomfort, so the potential applications for performance-improvement, coaching, and change management are huge!
If you haven't seen it yet, check out this Ted Talk by Lisa Feldman Barrett, the researcher behind a new theory of emotion for a glimpse of where this field is going:
