According to a recent study discussed here, it may be that we can lessen emotional distress simply by naming our emotions. Here's the deal:
A brain scanning study has found that naming emotions reduces the intensity of emotion processing in the brain, possibly outlining a brain network responsible for the old saying 'a problem shared is a problem halved'.
A team led by psychologist Dr Matthew Lieberman brain-scammed participants while they looked at pictures of faces that had different emotional expressions.
...It turned out that when naming an emotion, and not for the other tasks, activity in a frontal lobe area called the the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (right VLPFC) significantly increased while activity in the amygdala decreased.
The amygdala is known to be heavily involved in processing emotions and seems to be regulated, at least in part, by the VLPFC.
This is entirely consistent with the view that fear, once triggered by the amygdala, is mediated by the executive-function regions of the brain -- and that panic may result in those with insufficient or dysfunctional mediation efforts by those executive-function regions. ( Related. )
According to a recent study discussed here, it may be that we can lessen emotional distress simply by naming our emotions. Here's the deal:
This is entirely consistent with the view that fear, once triggered by the amygdala, is mediated by the executive-function regions of the brain -- and that panic may result in those with insufficient or dysfunctional mediation efforts by those executive-function regions. ( Related. )