Neuroscientists explore the intersection of music and memory

The soundtrack of this story begins with a vaguely recognizable and pleasant groove. But if I stop writing and just listen for a second, the music reveals itself completely. In Freddie Hubbard's comfortable, lilting trumpet solo over Herbie Hancock's melodic, repetitive piano vamping, I recognize "Cantaloupe Island." Then, with my fingers again poised at the keyboard, Freddie and Herbie fade into the background, followed by other instrumental music: captivating -- but not distracting -- sonic nutrition, feeding my concentration and productivity.

Somewhere, I think, Yiren Ren is studying, focused on her research that demonstrates how music impacts learning and memory. Possibly, she's listening to Norah Jones, or another musician she's comfortable with. Because that's how it works: The music we know and might love, music that feels predictable or even safe -- that music can help us study and learn. Meanwhile, Ren has also discovered, other kinds of music can influence our emotions and reshape old memories.

Ren, a sixth-year Ph.D. student in Georgia Tech's School of Psychology, explores these concepts as the lead author of two new research papers in the journals PLOS Oneand Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience (CABN).

"These studies are connected because they both explore innovative applications of music in memory modulation, offering insights for both every day and clinical use," says Ren.

But the collective research explores music's impacts in very different ways, explains Ren's faculty advisor and co-author of the study, Thackery Brown.

"One paper looks at how music changes the quality of your memory when you're first forming it -- it's about learning," says Brown, a cognitive neuroscientist who runs the MAP (Memory, Affect, and Planning) Lab at Tech. "But the other study focuses on memories we already have and asks if we can change the emotions attached to them using music."

Making Moods With Music

When we watch a movie with a robust score -- music created to induce emotions -- what we're hearing guides us exactly where the composer wants us to go. In their CABN study, Ren, Brown, and their collaborators from the University of Colorado (including former Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Grace Leslie) report that this kind of "mood music" can also be powerful enough to change how we remember our past.

Their study included 44 Georgia Tech students who listened to film soundtracks while recalling a difficult memory. Ren is quick to point out that this was not a clinical trial, so these participants were not identified as people suffering from mood disorders: "We wanted to start off with a random group of people and see if music has the power to modulate the emotional level of their memories."

Turns out, it does. The participants listened to movie soundtracks and incorporated new emotions into their memories that matched the mood of the music. And the effect was lasting. A day later, when the participants recalled these same memories -- but without musical accompaniment -- their emotional tone still matched the tone of the music played the day before.

The researchers could watch all this happening with fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). They could see the altered brain activity in the study participants, the increased connectivity between the amygdala, where emotions are processed, and other areas of the brain associated with memory and integrating information.

"This sheds light on the malleability of memory in response to music, and the powerful role music can play in altering our existing memories," says Ren.

Ren is herself a multi-instrumentalist who originally planned on being a professional musician. As an undergraduate at Boston University, she pursued a dual major in film production and sound design, and psychology.

She found a way to combine her interests in music and neuroscience and is interested in how music therapy can be designed to help people with mood disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression, "particularly in cases where someone might overexaggerate the negative components of a memory," Ren says.

There is no time machine that will allow us to go back and insert happy music into the mix while a bad event is happening and a memory is being formed, "but we can retrieve old memories while listening to affective music," says Brown. "And perhaps we can help people shift their feelings and reshape the emotional tone attached to certain memories."

Embracing the Familiar

The second study asks a couple of old questions: Should we listen to music while we work or study? And if so, are there more beneficial types of music than others? The answer to both questions might lie, at least partially, within the expansive parameters of personal taste. But even so, there are limits.

Think back to my description of "Cantaloupe Island" at the beginning of this story and how a familiar old jazz standard helped keep this writer's brain and fingers moving. In the same way, Norah Jones helps Ren when she's working on new research around music and memory. But if, for some reason, I wanted to test my concentration, I'd play a different kind of jazz, maybe 1950s bebop with its frenetic pace and off-center tone, or possibly a chorus of screeching cats. Same effect. It would demand my attention, and no work would get done.

For this study, Ren combined her gifts as a musician and composer with her research interests in examining whether music can improve -- or impair -- our ability to learn or remember new information. "We wanted to probe music's potential as a mnemonic device that helps us remember information more easily," she says. (An example of a mnemonic device is "Every Good Boy Does Fine," which stands for E-G-B-D-F and helps new piano players learn the order of notes on a keyboard.)

This study's 48 participants were asked to learn sequences of abstract shapes while listening to different types of music. Ren played a piece of music, in a traditional or familiar pattern of tone, rhythm, and melody. She then played the exact same set of notes, but out of order, giving the piece an atonal structure.

When they listened to familiar, predictable music, participants learned and remembered the sequences of shapes quicker as their brains created a structured framework, or scaffold, for the new information. Meanwhile, music that was familiar but irregular (think of this writer and the bebop example) made it harder for participants to learn.

"Depending its familiarity and structure, music can help or hinder our memory," says Ren, who wants to deepen her focus on the neural mechanisms through which music influences human behavior.

She plans to finish her Ph.D. studies this December and is seeking postdoctoral research positions that will allow her to continue the work she's started at Georgia Tech. Building on that, Ren wants to develop music-based therapies for conditions like depression or PTSD, while also exploring new rehabilitation strategies for aging populations and individuals with dementia.

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Researchers map how the brain regulates emotions

Ever want to scream during a particularly bad day, but then manage not to? Thank the human brain and how it regulates emotions, which can be critical for navigating everyday life. As we perceive events unfolding around us, the ability to be flexible and reframe a situation impacts not only how we feel, but also our behavior and decision-making.

In fact, some of the problems associated with mental health relate to individuals' inability to be flexible, such as when persistent negative thoughts make it hard to perceive a situation differently.

To help address such issues, a new Dartmouth-led study is among the first of its kind to separate activity relating to emotion generation from emotion regulation in the human brain. The findings are published in Nature Neuroscience.

"As a former biomedical engineer, it was exciting to identify some brain regions that are purely unique to regulating emotions," says lead author Ke Bo, a postdoctoral researcher in the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab (CANlab) at Dartmouth. "Our results provide new insight into how emotion regulation works by identifying targets which could have clinical applications."

For example, the systems the researchers identified could be good targets for brain stimulation to enhance the regulation of emotion.

Using computational methods, the researchers examined two independent datasets of fMRI studies obtained earlier by co-author Peter Gianaros at the University of Pittsburgh. Participants' brain activity was recorded in an fMRI scanner as they viewed images that were likely to draw a negative reaction such as a bloody scene or scary- looking animals.

The participants were then asked to recontextualize the stimulus by generating new kinds of thoughts about an image to make it less aversive, before a neutral image was presented followed by another dislikable image.

By examining the neural activity, researchers could identify the brain areas that are more active when emotions are regulated versus when emotions are generated.

The new study reveals that emotion regulation, also known in neuroscience as "reappraisal," involves particular areas of the anterior prefrontal cortex and other higher-level cortical hierarchies whose role in emotion regulation had not previously been isolated with this level of precision. These regions are involved in other high-level cognitive functions and are important for abstract thought and long-term representations of the future.

The more people are able to activate these emotion regulation-selective brain regions, the more resilient they are to experiencing something negative without letting it affect them personally. These findings build on other research linking these areas to better mental health and the ability to resist temptations and avoid drug addiction.

The results also demonstrated that the amygdala, which is known as the threat-related brain region responsible for negative emotion and has long been considered an ancient subcortical threat center, responds to aversive experiences the same way, whether people are using their thoughts to self-regulate down-regulate negative emotion or not. "It's really the cortex that is responsible for generating people's emotional responses, by changing the way we see and attach meaning to events in our environments," says Bo.

The researchers were also interested in identifying the neurochemicals that interact with emotion regulation systems. Neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin shape how networks of neurons communicate and are targets for both illicit drugs and therapeutic treatments alike. Some neurotransmitters may be important for enabling the ability to self-regulate or "down-regulate."

The team compared the emotion regulation brain maps from the two datasets to neurotransmitter binding maps from 36 other studies. The systems involved in regulating negative emotion overlapped with particular neurotransmitter systems.

"Our results showed that receptors for cannabinoids, opioids, and serotonin, including 5H2A, were especially rich in areas that are involved in emotion regulation," says senior author Tor Wager, the Diana L. Taylor Distinguished Professor in Neuroscience and director of the Dartmouth Brain Imaging Center at Dartmouth. "When drugs that bind to these receptors are taken, they are preferentially affecting the emotion regulation system, which raises questions about their potential for long-term effects on our capacity to self-regulate."

Serotonin is well-known for its role in depression, as the most widely used antidepressant drugs inhibit its reuptake in synapses, which transmit signals from one neuron to another.

5H2A is the serotonin receptor most strongly affected by another exciting new type of treatment for mental health -- psychedelic drugs. The study's findings suggest that the effects of drugs on depression and other mental health disorders may work in part by altering how we think about life events and our ability to self-regulate. This may help explain why drugs, particularly psychedelics, are likely to be ineffective without the right kind of psychological support. The study could help improve therapeutic approaches by increasing our understanding of why and how psychological and pharmaceutical approaches need to be combined into integrated treatments.

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World's largest childhood trauma study uncovers brain rewiring

The world's largest brain study of childhood trauma has revealed how it affects development and rewires vital pathways.

The University of Essex study -- led by the Department of Psychology's Dr Megan Klabunde -- uncovered a disruption in neural networks involved in self-focus and problem-solving.

This means under-18s who experienced abuse will likely struggle with emotions, empathy and understanding their bodies.

Difficulties in school caused by memory, hard mental tasks and decision making may also emerge.

Dr Klabunde's cutting-edge research used AI to re-examine hundreds of brain scans and identify patterns.

It is hoped the research will help hone new treatments for children who have endured mistreatment.

This could mean therapists focus on techniques that rewire these centres and rebuild their sense of self.

Dr Klabunde said: "Currently, science-based treatments for childhood trauma primarily focus on addressing the fearful thoughts and avoidance of trauma triggers.

"This is a very important part of trauma treatment. However, our study has revealed that we are only treating one part of the problem.

"Even when a child who has experienced trauma is not thinking about their traumatic experiences, their brains are struggling to process their sensations within their bodies.

"This influences how one thinks and feels about one's 'internal world' and this also influences one's ability to empathise and form relationships."

Dr Klabunde reviewed 14 studies involving more than 580 children for the research published in Biological Psychiatry Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.

The paper re-examined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans.

This procedure highlights blood flow in different centres, showing neurological activity.

The study discovered a marked difference in traumatised children's default mode (DMN) and central executive networks (CEN) -- two large scale brain systems.

The DMN and the posterior insula are involved in how people sense their body, the sense of self and their internal reflections.

New studies are finding the DMN plays an important role in most mental health problems -- and may be influenced by experiencing childhood trauma.

The CEN is also more active than in healthy children, which means that children with trauma histories tend to ruminate and relive terrible experiences when triggered.

Dr Klabunde hopes this study will be a springboard to find out more about how trauma affects developing minds.

She said: "Our brain findings indicate that childhood trauma treatments appear to be missing an important piece of the puzzle.

"In addition to preventing avoidance of scary situations and addressing one's thoughts, trauma therapies in children should also address how trauma's impacts on one's body, sense of self, emotional/empathetic processing, and relationships.

"This is important to do so since untreated symptoms will likely contribute to other health and mental health problems throughout the lifespan."

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Music causes similar emotions and bodily sensations across cultures

Music can be felt directly in the body. When we hear our favourite catchy song, we are overcome with the urge to move to the music. Music can activate our autonomic nervous system and even cause shivers down the spine. A new study from the Turku PET Centre in Finland shows how emotional music evokes similar bodily sensations across cultures.

"Music that evoked different emotions, such as happiness, sadness or fear, caused different bodily sensations in our study. For example, happy and danceable music was felt in the arms and legs, while tender and sad music was felt in the chest area," explains Academy Research Fellow Vesa Putkinen.

The emotions and bodily sensations evoked by music were similar across Western and Asian listeners.

The bodily sensations were also linked with the music-induced emotions.

"Certain acoustic features of music were associated with similar emotions in both Western and Asian listeners. Music with a clear beat was found happy and danceable while dissonance in music was associated with aggressiveness. Since these sensations are similar across different cultures, music-induced emotions are likely independent of culture and learning and based on inherited biological mechanisms," says Professor Lauri Nummenmaa.

"Music's influence on the body is universal. People move to music in all cultures and synchronized postures, movements and vocalizations are a universal sign for affiliation. Music may have emerged during the evolution of human species to promote social interaction and sense of community by synchronising the bodies and emotions of the listeners," continues Putkinen.

The study was conducted in collaboration with Aalto University from Finland and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) as an online questionnaire survey.

Altogether 1,500 Western and Asian participants rated the emotions and bodily sensations evoked by Western and Asian songs.

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Why emotions stirred by music create such powerful memories

Time flows in a continuous stream -- yet our memories are divided into separate episodes, all of which become part of our personal narrative. How emotions shape this memory formation process is a mystery that science has only recently begun to unravel. The latest clue comes from UCLA psychologists, who have discovered that fluctuating emotions elicited by music helps form separate and durable memories.

The study, published in Nature Communications, used music to manipulate the emotions of volunteers performing simple tasks on a computer. The researchers found that the dynamics of people's emotions molded otherwise neutral experiences into memorable events.

"Changes in emotion evoked by music created boundaries between episodes that made it easier for people to remember what they had seen and when they had seen it," said lead author Mason McClay, a doctoral student in psychology at UCLA. "We think this finding has great therapeutic promise for helping people with PTSD and depression."

As time unfolds, people need to group information, since there is too much to remember (and not all of it useful). Two processes appear to be involved in turning experiences into memories over time: The first integrates our memories, compressing and linking them into individualized episodes; the other expands and separates each memory as the experience recedes into the past. There's a constant tug of war between integrating memories and separating them, and it's this push and pull that helps to form distinct memories. This flexible process helps a person understand and find meaning in their experiences, as well as retain information.

"It's like putting items into boxes for long-term storage," said corresponding author David Clewett, an assistant professor of psychology at UCLA. "When we need to retrieve a piece of information, we open the box that holds it. What this research shows is that emotions seem to be an effective box for doing this sort of organization and for making memories more accessible."

A similar effect may help explain why Taylor Swift's "Eras Tour" has been so effective at creating vivid and lasting memories: Her concert contains meaningful chapters that can be opened and closed to relive highly emotional experiences.

McClay and Clewett, along with Matthew Sachs at Columbia University, hired composers to create music specifically designed to elicit joyous, anxious, sad or calm feelings of varied intensity. Study participants listened to the music while imagining a narrative to accompany a series of neutral images on a computer screen, such as a watermelon slice, a wallet or a soccer ball. They also used the computer mouse to track moment-to-moment changes in their feelings on a novel tool developed for tracking emotional reactions to music.

Then, after performing a task meant to distract them, participants were shown pairs of images again in a random order. For each pair, they were asked which image they had seen first, then how far apart in time they felt they had seen the two objects. Pairs of objects that participants had seen immediately before and after a change of emotional state -- whether of high, low, or medium intensity -- were remembered as having occurred farther apart in time compared to images that did not span an emotional change. Participants also had worse memory for the order of items that spanned emotional changes compared to items they had viewed while in a more stable emotional state. These effects suggest that a change in emotion resulting from listening to music was pushing new memories apart.

"This tells us that intense moments of emotional change and suspense, like the musical phrases in Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' could be remembered as having lasted longer than less emotive experiences of similar length," McClay said. "Musicians and composers who weave emotional events together to tell a story may be imbuing our memories with a rich temporal structure and longer sense of time."

The direction of the change in emotion also mattered. Memory integration was best -- that is, memories of sequential items felt closer together in time, and participants were better at recalling their order -- when the shift was toward more positive emotions. On the other hand, a shift toward more negative emotions (from calmer to sadder, for example) tended to separate and expand the mental distance between new memories.

Participants were also surveyed the following day to assess their longer-term memory, and showed better memory for items and moments when their emotions changed, especially if they were experiencing intense positive emotions. This suggests that feeling more positive and energized can fuse different elements of an experience together in memory.

Sachs emphasized the utility of music as an intervention technique.

"Most music-based therapies for disorders rely on the fact that listening to music can help patients relax or feel enjoyment, which reduces negative emotional symptoms," he said. The benefits of music-listening in these cases are therefore secondary and indirect. Here, we are suggesting a possible mechanism by which emotionally dynamic music might be able to directly treat the memory issues that characterize such disorders."

Clewett said these findings could help people reintegrate the memories that have caused post-traumatic stress disorder.

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Placebo reduces feelings of guilt

People don't always behave impeccably in relationship to others. When we notice that this has inadvertently caused harm, we often feel guilty. This is an uncomfortable feeling and motivates us to take remedial action, such as apologizing or owning up.

This is why guilt is considered an important moral emotion, as long as it is adaptive -- in other words, appropriate and in proportion to the situation. "It can improve interpersonal relationships and is therefore valuable for social cohesion," says Dilan Sezer, researcher at the Division of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at the University of Basel.

Whether feelings of guilt can be reduced by taking placebos is something that researchers at the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Basel have been exploring. Their findings have now been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Open-label placebos work

In order to arouse feelings of guilt, test subjects in the study were asked to write about a time when they had disregarded important rules of conduct, or treated someone close to them unfairly, hurt or even harmed them. The idea was that the study participants should still feel bad about the chosen situation.

Participants were then randomized to three conditions: Participants in one group were given placebo pills with being deceptively told that this was a real medication while participants in another group were told that they are given a placebo. Both groups were told that what they had been given will be effective against feelings of guilt. The control group was given no treatment at all. The results showed that feelings of guilt were significantly reduced in both placebo groups compared with those without medication.

This was also the case when the subjects knew they had been given a placebo. "Our study therefore supports the intriguing finding that placebos work even when they are administered openly, and that explanation of the treatment is key to its effectiveness," states the study's lead author, Dilan Sezer. Participants in this study were all healthy, had no psychiatric disorders and were not being treated with psychotropics.

Clinical applicability not yet proven

Where feelings of guilt are irrational and continue for longer periods of time, they are considered maladaptive -- in other words, disproportionate. These emotions can affect people's health and are also, among other things, a common symptom of depression.

Scientific studies have shown that placebo effects can be powerful in treating depression. But the finding that open-label placebos can also be useful for such strong emotions as guilt is new. It stands to reason, says Dilan Sezer, that we should try to harness these effects to help those affected. "The administering of open-label placebos, in particular, is a promising approach, as it preserves patient autonomy by allowing patients to be fully aware of how the intervention works." The results of the study are an initial promising step in the direction of symptom-specific and more ethical treatments for psychological complaints using open-label placebos, Sezer continues.

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How sleep helps to process emotions

Researchers at the Department of Neurology of the University of Bern and University Hospital Bern identified how the brain triages emotions during dream sleep to consolidate the storage of positive emotions while dampening the consolidation of negative ones. The work expands the importance of sleep in mental health and opens new ways of therapeutic strategies.

Rapid eye movement (REM or paradoxical) sleep is a unique and mysterious sleep state during which most of the dreams occur together with intense emotional contents. How and why these emotions are reactivated is unclear. The prefrontal cortex integrates many of these emotions during wakefulness but appears paradoxically quiescent during REM sleep. "Our goal was to understand the underlying mechanism and the functions of such a surprising phenomenon," says Prof. Antoine Adamantidis from the Department of Biomedical Research (DBMR) at the University of Bern and the Department of Neurology at the Inselspital, University Hospital of Bern.

Processing emotions, particularly distinguishing between danger and safety, is critical for the survival of animals. In humans, excessively negative emotions, such as fear reactions and states of anxiety, lead to pathological states like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD). In Europe, roughly 15% of the population is affected by persistent anxiety and severe mental illness. The research group headed by Antoine Adamantidis is now providing insights into how the brain helps to reinforce positive emotions and weaken strongly negative or traumatic emotions during REM sleep. This study was published in the journal Science.

A Dual mechanism

The researchers first conditioned mice to recognize auditory stimuli associated with safety and others associated with danger (aversive stimuli). The activity of neurons in the brain of mice was then recorded during sleep-wake cycles. In this way, the researchers were able to map different areas of a cell and determine how emotional memories are transformed during REM sleep.

Neurons are composed of a cell body (soma) that integrates information coming from the dendrites (inputs) and send signals to other neurons via their axons (outputs). The results obtained showed that cell somas are kept silent while their dendrites are activated. "This means a decoupling of the two cellular compartments, in other words soma wide asleep and dendrites wide awake," explains Adamantidis. This decoupling is important because the strong activity of the dendrites allows the encoding of both danger and safety emotions, while the inhibitions of the soma completely block the output of the circuit during REM sleep. In other words, the brain favours the discrimination of safety versus danger in the dendrites, but block the over-reaction to emotion, in particular danger.

A survival advantage

According to the researchers, the coexistence of both mechanisms is beneficial to the stability and survival of the organisms: "This bi-directional mechanism is essential to optimize the discrimination between dangerous and safe signals," says Mattia Aime from the DBMR, first author of the study. If this discrimination is missing in humans and excessive fear reactions are generated, this can lead to anxiety disorders. The findings are particularly relevant to pathological conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorders, in which trauma is over-consolidated in the prefrontal cortex, day after day during sleep.

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Certain personality traits associated with cognitive functioning late in life

People who are organized, with high levels of self-discipline, may be less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment as they age, while people who are moody or emotionally unstable are more likely to experience cognitive decline late in life, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

The research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, focused on the role three of the so-called "Big Five" personality traits (conscientiousness, neuroticism and extraversion) play in cognitive functioning later in life.

"Personality traits reflect relatively enduring patterns of thinking and behaving, which may cumulatively affect engagement in healthy and unhealthy behaviors and thought patterns across the lifespan," said lead author Tomiko Yoneda, PhD, of the University of Victoria. "The accumulation of lifelong experiences may then contribute to susceptibility of particular diseases or disorders, such as mild cognitive impairment, or contribute to individual differences in the ability to withstand age-related neurological changes."

Individuals who score high in conscientiousness tend to be responsible, organized, hard-working and goal-directed. Those who score high on neuroticism have low emotional stability and have a tendency toward mood swings, anxiety, depression, self-doubt and other negative feelings. Extraverts draw energy from being around others and directing their energies toward people and the outside world. They tend to be enthusiastic, gregarious, talkative and assertive, according to Yoneda.

To better understand the relationship between personality traits and cognitive impairment later in life, researchers analyzed data from 1,954 participants in the Rush Memory and Aging Project, a longitudinal study of older adults living in the greater Chicago metropolitan region and northeastern Illinois. Participants without a formal diagnosis of dementia were recruited from retirement communities, church groups, and subsidized senior housing facilities beginning in 1997 and continuing to the present. Participants received a personality assessment and agreed to annual assessments of their cognitive abilities. The study included participants who had received at least two annual cognitive assessments or one assessment prior to death.

Participants who scored either high on conscientiousness or low in neuroticism were significantly less likely to progress from normal cognition to mild cognitive impairment over the course of the study.

"Scoring approximately six more points on a conscientiousness scale ranging 0 to 48 was associated with a 22% decreased risk of transitioning from normal cognitive functioning to mild cognitive impairment," said Yoneda. "Additionally, scoring approximately seven more points on a neuroticism scale of 0 to 48 was associated with a 12% increased risk of transition."

Researchers found no association between extraversion and ultimate development of mild cognitive impairment, but they did find that participants who scored high on extraversion -- along with those who scored either high on conscientiousness or low in neuroticism -- tended to maintain normal cognitive functioning longer than others.

For example, 80-year-old participants who were high in conscientiousness were estimated to live nearly two years longer without cognitive impairment compared with individuals who were low in conscientiousness. Participants high in extraversion were estimated to maintain healthy cognition for approximately a year longer. In contrast, high neuroticism was associated with at least one less year of healthy cognitive functioning, highlighting the harms associated with the long-term experience of perceived stress and emotional instability, according to Yoneda.

Additionally, individuals lower in neuroticism and higher in extraversion were more likely to recover to normal cognitive function after receiving a previous diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment, suggesting that these traits may be protective even after an individual starts to progress to dementia. In the case of extraversion, this finding may be indicative of the benefits of social interaction for improving cognitive outcomes, according to Yoneda.

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Do octopuses, squid and crabs have emotions?

Octopuses can solve complex puzzles and show a preference for different individuals, but whether they, and other animals and invertebrates, have emotions is being hotly debated and could shake up humans' moral decision-making, says a York University expert in animal minds.

Most countries don't recognize invertebrates, such as octopuses, crabs, lobsters and crayfish, as sentient beings that can feel pain, but the United Kingdom is considering amendments to its animal welfare legislation that would recognize this.

"A London School of Economics (LSE) report commissioned by the U.K. government found there is strong enough evidence to conclude that decapod crustaceans and cephalopod molluscs are sentient," says York University Professor and philosopher Kristin Andrews, the York Research Chair in Animal Minds, who is working with the LSE team.

Andrews co-wrote an article published today in the journal Science, "The question of animal emotions," with Professor Frans de Waal, director of the Living Links Center at Emory University, which discusses the ethical and policy issues around animals being considered sentient.

Andrews points out it has long been thought in Western culture that other animals don't feel pain or have emotions. "It's been a real struggle even to get fish and mammals recognized under welfare law as sentient. So, it's pretty cutting-edge what seems to be happening in the U.K. with invertebrates."

Pre-verbal human babies were considered not to feel pain up until at least the 1980s. It is still thought by many that animals, including invertebrates, don't feel pain and only have unconscious reactions to negative stimuli. However, research on mammals, fish, octopuses, and to a lesser extent crabs, has shown they avoid pain and dangerous locations, and there are signs of empathy in some animals, such as cows -- they become distressed when they see their calf is in pain.

Recognizing the sentience of invertebrates opens a moral and ethical dilemma. Humans can say what they feel, but animals don't have the same tools for describing their emotions. "However, the research so far strongly suggests their existence," says Andrews, is working on a research project called Animals and Moral Practice.

"When we're going about our normal lives, we try not to do harm to other beings. So, it's really about retraining the way we see the world. How exactly to treat other animals remains an open research question," says Andrews. "We don't have sufficient science right now to know exactly what the proper treatment of certain species should be. To determine that, we need greater co-operation between scientists and ethicists."

There may be a point when humans can no longer assume that crayfish, shrimp, and other invertebrates don't feel pain and other emotions.

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Pig grunts reveal their emotions

We can now decode pigs' emotions. Using thousands of acoustic recordings gathered throughout the lives of pigs, from their births to deaths, an international team of researchers is the first in the world to translate pig grunts into actual emotions across an extended number of conditions and life stages. The research is led by the University of Copenhagen, the ETH Zurich and the France's National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), and can be used to improve animal welfare in the future.

Is a pig grunt worth a thousand words? Perhaps so. In a new study, an international team of researchers from Denmark, Switzerland, France, Germany, Norway and the Czech Republic have translated pig grunts into emotions. The findings have been published today in Scientific Reports.

Using more than 7000 audio recordings of pigs, the researchers designed an algorithm that can decode whether an individual pig is experiencing a positive emotion ('happy' or 'excited'), a negative one ('scared' or 'stressed') or somewhere in between. The recordings were collected in a wide range of situations encountered by commercial pigs, both positive and negative, from when they are born until their deaths.

"With this study, we demonstrate that animal sounds provide great insight into their emotions. We also prove that an algorithm can be used to decode and understand the emotions of pigs, which is an important step towards improved animal welfare for livestock," says Associate Professor Elodie Briefer of the University of Copenhagen's Department of Biology at the University of Copenhagen, who co-led the study.

Short grunts are 'happy' grunts

The researchers recorded pig sounds in both commercial and experimental scenarios, which based on the behavior of the pigs, are either associated with a positive and negative emotion. Positive situations included, for example, those when piglets suckle from their mothers or when they arere united with their family after being separated. The emotionally negative situations included, among others, separation, fights between piglets, castration and slaughter.

In experimental stables, the researchers also created various mock scenarios for the pigs, designed to evoke more nuanced emotions in the middle of the spectrum. These included an arena with toys or food and a corresponding arena without any stimuli. The researchers also placed new and unfamiliar objects in the arena for the pigs to interact with. Along the way, the pigs' calls, behavior and heartrates were monitored and recorded when possible.

The researchers then analyzed the more than 7000 audio recordings to see if there was a pattern in the sounds as a function of the emotions, and if they could discern the positive situations and emotions from the negative ones. As already revealed in previous research, the researchers collected more high-frequency calls (such as screams and squeals) in negative situations. At the same time, low-frequency calls (such as barks and grunts) occurred both in situations where the pigs experienced positive or negative emotions.

The situations between the extremes were particularly interesting. With an even more thorough analysis of the sound files, the researchers found a new pattern that revealed what the pigs experienced in certain situations in even greater detail.

"There are clear differences in pig calls when we look at positive and negative situations. In the positive situations, the calls are far shorter, with minor fluctuations in amplitude. Grunts, more specifically, begin high and gradually go lower in frequency. By training an algorithm to recognize these sounds, we can classify 92% of the calls to the correct emotion," explains Elodie Briefer.

Farmers can monitor animal emotions

The study of animal emotions is a relatively new field that has come about over the last 20 years. Today, it is widely accepted that the mental health of livestock is important for their overall well-being. Nevertheless, today's animal welfare focuses primarily on the physical health of livestock. Indeed, several systems exist that can automatically monitor an animal's physical health for a farmer.

Analogous systems to monitor the mental health of animals have yet to be developed. The researchers of the study hope their algorithm might pave the way for a new platform for farmers to keep an eye on their animals' psychological well-being.

"We have trained the algorithm to decode pig grunts. Now, we need someone who wants to develop the algorithm into an app that farmers can use to improve the welfare of their animals," says Elodie Briefer.

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Scientists can control brain circuits, behavior, and emotion using light

Controlling signal transmission and reception within the brain circuits is necessary for neuroscientists to achieve a better understanding of the brain's functions. Communication among neuron and glial cells is mediated by various neurotransmitters being released from the vesicles through exocytosis. Thus, regulating vesicular exocytosis can be a possible strategy to control and understand brain circuits.

However, it has been difficult to freely control the activity of brain cells in a spatiotemporal manner using pre-existing techniques. One is an indirect approach that involves artificially controlling the membrane potential of cells, but it comes with problems of changing the acidity of the surrounding environment or causing unwanted misfiring of neurons. Moreover, it is not applicable for use in cells that do not respond to the membrane potential changes, such as glial cells.

To address this problem, South Korean researchers led by Director C. Justin LEE at the Center for Cognition and Sociality within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) and professor HEO Won Do at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed Opto-vTrap, a light-inducible and reversible inhibition system that can temporarily trap vesicles from being released from brain cells. Opto-vTrap directly targets transmitters containing vesicles, and it can be used in various types of brain cells, even the ones that do not respond to membrane potential changes.

In order to directly control the exocytotic vesicles, the research team applied a technology they previously developed in 2014, called light-activated reversible inhibition by assembled trap (LARIAT). This platform can inactivate various types of proteins when illuminated under blue light by instantly trapping the target proteins, like a lariat. Opto-vTrap was developed by applying this LARIAT platform to vesicle exocytosis. When the Opto-vTrap expressing cells or tissues are shined under blue light, the vesicles form clusters and become trapped within the cells, inhibiting the release of transmitters.

Most importantly, the inhibition triggered using this new technique is temporary, which is very important for neuroscience research. Other previous techniques that target vesicle fusion proteins damage them permanently and disable the target neuron for up to 24 hours, which is not appropriate for many behavioral experiments with short time constraints. By comparison, vesicles that were inactivated using Opto-vTrap decluster in about 15 minutes, and the neurons regain their full functions within an hour.

Opto-vTrap directly controls the signal transmitters' release, enabling the researchers to freely control brain activity. The research team verified the usability of Opto-vTrap in cultured cells and brain tissue slices. Furthermore, they tested the technique in live mice, which enabled them to temporarily remove fear memory from fear-conditioned animals.

In the future, Opto-vTrap will be used to uncover complex interactions between multiple parts of the brain. It will be a highly useful tool for studying how certain brain cell types affect brain function in different circumstances.

Professor Heo stated, "Since Opto-vTrap can be used in various cell types, it is expected to be helpful in various fields of brain science research," He explained, "We plan to conduct a study to figure out the spatiotemporal brain functions in various brain cell types in a specific environment using Opto-vTrap technology."

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Men, women ride the same emotional roller coaster

Contrary to widely held gender stereotypes, women are not more emotional than men, researchers say.

Feelings such as enthusiasm, nervousness or strength are often interpreted differently between the two genders. It's what being "emotional" means to men vs. women that is part of a new University of Michigan study that dispels these biases.

For instance, a man whose emotions fluctuate during a sporting event is described as "passionate." But a woman whose emotions change due to any event, even if provoked, is considered "irrational," says the study's senior author Adriene Beltz, U-M assistant professor of psychology.

Beltz and colleagues Alexander Weigard, U-M assistant professor of psychiatry, and Amy Loviska, a graduate student at Purdue University, followed 142 men and women over 75 days to learn more about their daily emotions, both positive and negative. The women were divided into four groups: one naturally cycling and three others using different forms of oral contraceptives.

The researchers detected fluctuations in emotions three different ways, and then compared the sexes. They found little-to-no differences between the men and the various groups of women, suggesting that men's emotions fluctuate to the same extent as women's do (although likely for different reasons).

"We also didn't find meaningful differences between the groups of women, making clear that emotional highs and lows are due to many influences -- not only hormones," she said.

The findings have implications beyond everyday people, the researchers say. Women have historically been excluded from research participation in part due to the assumption that ovarian hormone fluctuations lead to variation, especially in emotion, that can't be experimentally controlled, they say.

"Our study uniquely provides psychological data to show that the justifications for excluding women in the first place (because fluctuating ovarian hormones, and consequently emotions, confounded experiments) were misguided," Beltz said.

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Sleep loss does not impact ability to assess emotional information

It's no secret that going without sleep can affect people's mood, but a new study shows it does not interfere with their ability to evaluate emotional situations.

It is often assumed that feeling more negative will color people's experience of emotional images and events in the environment around them. However, Washington State University researchers found that while going 24 hours without sleep impacted study participants' mood, it did not change their performance on tests evaluating their ability to process emotional words and images.

"People do become less happy through sleep deprivation, but it's not affecting how they are processing emotional stimuli in their environment," said Anthony Stenson, a WSU psychology doctoral student and lead author of the study in Plos One.

The findings have implications for healthcare providers, law enforcement and people in other long-hour professions who need to be able to control their own emotions during stressful and emotionally trying situations. Sleep loss in not likely to make them numb to emotional situations, the researchers found, but it is likely to make them less able to control their own emotional responses.

For the study, about 60 adult participants spent four consecutive days in the Sleep and Performance Research Center at the WSU Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine. All participants were allowed to sleep normally the first night and then given a set of baseline tests to judge their mood as well as their emotional regulation and processing ability. Then, the researchers divided the participants into two groups: one group of 40 people spent the second night awake, while a control group of 20 were allowed a normal sleep period. The tests were then re-administered at different intervals.

The emotional regulation and processing tests both involved viewing a series of images with positive and negative emotional connotations. In the emotional regulation tests, participants were given a prompt to help them recontextualize negative images before seeing them and asked to control their feelings. The sleep-deprived group had greater difficulty reducing the emotion they felt when instructed to do so.

The processing tests involved responding to words and images with emotional content, for example rating the emotions conveyed by a smiling family, a growling dog or a crying child All participants performed similarly on these tests whether they were sleep deprived or not.

The distinction between processing the emotional content of the world around you and being able to regulate your own emotional responses is an important one, especially for some professions, said co-author Paul Whitney, a WSU professor of psychology.

"I don't think we want our first responders being numb to the emotional nature of the situations they encounter, and it looks like they are not," he said. "On the other hand, reacting normally to emotional situations, but not being able to control your own emotions, could be one reason sleep loss sometimes produces catastrophic errors in stressful situations."

A lot of previous research has looked at how sleep deprivation impacts so called "cold" cognitive tasks -- supposedly emotionally neutral tasks like recalling facts. These studies have also found that regulation, which is considered a "top-down" cognitive process, is a major problem with cold cognitive tasks. For instance, mental flexibility is compromised by sleep deprivation. This is the ability an emergency room doctor might need to quickly change tactics if a patient isn't responding to a treatment.

The current study shows that top-down regulation is a problem as well with "hot" or emotional cognitive processes. Future research is needed to understand whether the effects of sleep loss on the two top-down processes are linked.

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There’s a bright side to being a ‘Debbie Downer’

New research shows that keeping busy with a variety of activities can elicit both positive and negative emotions, and some of the relationship could depend on your age. A new study published in the Journal of Gerontology finds that engaging in diverse daily activities is associated with a diverse set of emotions.

"Experiencing a broad spectrum of emotions is adaptive and beneficial to health because it means having a more balanced and nuanced appraisal of daily life," said Soomi Lee, assistant professor of aging studies in the University of South Florida College of Behavioral and Community Sciences. "For example, even for negative emotions, feeling intense anger across situations may mean that the individual has a narrow appraisal of situations, whereas feeling a mix of anger, sadness and shame may indicate a broader and more nuanced appraisal."

Lee reviewed data collected on nearly 3,000 middle-aged participants enrolled in the Midlife in the United States Study who are considered relatively healthy and well-educated. She found individuals who regularly participated in a broad range of daily activities experienced diverse emotional experiences -- both positive and negative -- with those between ages 33-44 experiencing more diverse positive emotions compared to those between ages 68-84.

The study looked at the amount of time individuals spent participating in seven activities: paid work, spending time with children, chores, leisure, physical activities, formal volunteering and helping someone outside of their household, such as a neighbor. Participants recorded their activities for eight consecutive days, as well as their positive and negative emotions, which were used to calculate emodiversity scores.

Emodiversity is a term used to describe rich and balanced emotions. Emodiversity was broken into 13 positive emotions: cheerful, in good spirits, extremely happy, calm and peaceful, satisfied, full of life, enthusiastic, attentive, proud, active, close to others, belonging and confident, as well as 14 negative emotions: worthlessness, nervous, restless or fidgety, hopeless, afraid, jittery, irritable, ashamed, upset, lonely, angry, frustrated, that everything is an effort and so sad that nothing could cheer you up.

Lee says the younger demographic may have stronger emotions than older adults since their activities are more diverse. Many spend more time at work and with children, which tends to decrease with age. Also, older adults may have more muted or monotonic emotions as a result of wisdom or their strategy to reduce the range of novel social interactions to avoid potentially negative situations. Interestingly, the overall amount of time spent participating in activities was not associated with neither positive nor negative emodiversity, suggesting that total activity time is not what matters, but rather that an even amount of time is spent participating in a broad range of activities.

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Explanation of how religious beliefs may be formed

Feeling anxious can direct our attention and memory toward supernatural beings such as gods, a University of Otago study has found.

Lead author Dr Thomas Swan, of the Department of Psychology, says the research may help explain how religious beliefs are formed.

For the study, published in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 972 participants completed an online recall test to determine if a bias to recall supernatural agents was stronger in anxious people, rather than non-anxious people.

Those who felt anxious were more likely to remember beings with supernatural abilities than beings without.

"Anxiety is an emotion that evolved to make us pay greater attention to potential threats, so when we feel anxious, a god that can read our thoughts and punish us for them, or flood the Earth, is going to be memorable," he says.

Previous research has shown anxiety can lead to greater levels of religious belief, with the explanation being that belief provides comfort. However, this so-called 'comfort theory' has problems: why are there punishing gods and hellish afterlives when these are far from comforting?

Dr Swan believes the theory also fails to address what comes between feeling anxious and becoming a believer. This research suggests the first step involves the cognitive effects of anxiety, which cause people to attend to and recall threats.

"In our previous research, we found that supernatural beings are perceived as potentially threatening because they have abilities that defy our expectations about the world. The present research confirms that the cognitive effects of anxiety also extend to the threat that is afforded by supernatural beings.

"Ironically then, our research suggests comfort theory has it somewhat backwards: anxious people are attracted, at least initially, to the scary traits of gods, which may explain why so many gods have scary features. Comfort, we suspect, comes later when some people transform their view of the god into something more palatable that they are happier believing," he says.

The research also suggests other supernatural concepts -- such as ghosts, psychics, and astrology -- will be digested in the same way because of how they alarmingly defy our expectations about what is possible.

Dr Swan hopes the research prompts people to develop a greater understanding of how their emotional states affect the information they look at and remember, particularly religious information.

"We should all be mindful of how we came to believe the things we do, especially those with anxiety disorders who feel anxious much of the time -- they should be mindful of what they are attracted to and why. If they find themselves reading fantasy novels, that may be harmless. If they find themselves joining a cult, then it's time for some reflection. The same goes for people without disorders who are just in anxious situations, such as sitting in a hospital bed or suffering financial troubles."

On the flipside, he hopes religious groups pay more attention to people's mental states.

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Chronic alcohol use reshapes the brain's immune landscape, driving anxiety and addiction

 Deep within the brain, a small almond-shaped region called the amygdala plays a vital role in how we exhibit emotion, behavior and motivation. Understandably, it's also strongly implicated in alcohol abuse, making it a long-running focus of Marisa Roberto, PhD, professor in Scripps Research's Department of Molecular Medicine.

Now, for the first time, Roberto and her team have identified important changes to anti-inflammatory mechanisms and cellular activity in the amygdala that drive alcohol addiction. By countering this process in mice, they were able to stop excessive alcohol consumption -- revealing a potential treatment path for alcohol use disorder. The study is published in Progress in Neurobiology.

"We found that chronic alcohol exposure compromises brain immune cells, which are important for maintaining healthy neurons," says Reesha Patel, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Roberto's lab and first author of the study. "The resulting damage fuels anxiety and alcohol drinking that may lead to alcohol use disorder."

Roberto's study looked specifically at an immune protein called Interleukin 10, or IL-10, which is prevalent in the brain. IL-10 is known to have potent anti-inflammatory properties, which ensures that the immune system doesn't respond too powerfully to disease threats. In the brain, IL-10 helps to limit inflammation from injury or disease, such as stroke or Alzheimer's. But it also appears to influence key behaviors associated with chronic alcohol use.

In mice with chronic alcohol use, IL-10 was significantly reduced in the amygdala and didn't signal properly to neurons, contributing to increased alcohol intake. By boosting IL-10 signaling in the brain, however, the scientists could reverse the aberrant effects. Notably, they observed a stark reduction in anxiety-like behaviors and motivation to drink alcohol.

"We've shown that inflammatory immune responses in the brain are very much at play in the development and maintenance of alcohol use disorder," Roberto says. "But perhaps more importantly, we provided a new framework for therapeutic intervention, pointing to anti-inflammatory mechanisms."

Alcohol use disorder is widespread, affecting some 15 million people in the United States, and few effective treatments exist. By examining how brain cells change with prolonged exposure to alcohol, Roberto's lab has uncovered many possible new therapeutic approaches for those with alcohol addiction.

In the latest study, Roberto's lab collaborated with Silke Paust, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology. Paust and her team determined the precise immune cells throughout the whole brain that are affected by chronic alcohol use. The findings revealed a large shift in the brain immune landscape, with increased levels of immune cells known as microglia and T-regulatory cells, which produce IL-10.

Despite a higher number of IL-10-producing cells in the whole brain of mice with prolonged alcohol use, the amygdala told a different story. In that region, levels of IL-10 were lower and their signaling function was compromised -- suggesting that the immune system in the amygdala responds uniquely to chronic alcohol use.

This study complements recent findings by the Roberto lab demonstrating a casual role for microglia in the development of alcohol dependence.

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Multitasking in the workplace can lead to negative emotions

From writing papers to answering emails, it's common for office workers to juggle multiple tasks at once. But those constant interruptions can actually create sadness and fear and eventually, a tense working environment, according to a new study aimed at understanding what shapes the emotional culture of a workplace.

"Not only do people experience stress with multitasking, but their faces may also express unpleasant emotions and that can have negative consequences for the entire office culture," said study senior author Ioannis Pavlidis, director of the Computational Physiology Laboratory at the University of Houston.

Pavlidis, along with Gloria Mark at the University of California Irvine and Ricardo Gutierrez-Osuna at Texas A&M University, used a novel algorithm, based on co-occurrence matrices, to analyze mixed emotions manifested on the faces of so-called knowledge workers amidst an essay writing task. One group answered a single batch of emails before they began writing, thus limiting the amount of distraction, while the other group was frequently interrupted to answer emails as they came in.

The findings are published in the Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

"Individuals who engaged in multitasking appeared significantly sadder than those who did not. Interestingly, sadness tended to mix with a touch of fear in the multitasking cohort," Pavlidis said. "Multitasking imposes an onerous mental load and is associated with elevated stress, which appears to trigger the displayed sadness. The simultaneous onset of fear is intriguing and is likely rooted to subconscious anticipation of the next disruption," he added. Because multitasking is a widespread practice, the display of these negative emotions can persist throughout the workday for many people. It is this ubiquitous, continuous and persistent character of the phenomenon that renders it such a dangerous `climate maker', the researchers emphasized.

The facial expressions of the workers who answered emails in one batch remained mostly neutral during the course of their uninterrupted writing task. However, there was an element of anger during the separate email task, perhaps attributed to the realization of the amount of work needed to process all the emails in one session, the researchers theorize. The good news is that email batching is localized in time and thus its emotional effects don't last long. Solutions are possible in this case; the team suggests addressing the email batch at a later time when responding to emails is the only task, recognizing that won't always be possible due to office pressure.

Negative displayed emotions -- especially in open office settings -- can have significant consequences on company culture, according to the paper. "Emotional contagion can spread in a group or workplace through the influence of conscious or unconscious processes involving emotional states or physiological responses."

Upon return to normalcy following the COVID-19 crisis, the results suggest organizations should pay attention to multi-tasking practices to ensure a cohesive working environment. "Currently, an intriguing question is what the emotional effect of multitasking at home would be, where knowledge workers moved their operation during the COVID 19 pandemic," said Pavlidis.

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Facial expressions don't tell the whole story of emotion

Interacting with other people is almost always a game of reading cues and volleying back. We think a smile conveys happiness, so we offer a smile in return. We think a frown shows sadness, and maybe we attempt to cheer that person up.

Some businesses are even working on technology to determine customer satisfaction through facial expressions.

But facial expressions might not be reliable indicators of emotion, research indicates. In fact, it might be more accurate to say we should never trust a person's face, new research suggests.

"The question we really asked is: 'Can we truly detect emotion from facial articulations?'" said Aleix Martinez, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at The Ohio State University.

"And the basic conclusion is, no, you can't."

Martinez, whose work has focused on building computer algorithms that analyze facial expressions, and his colleagues presented their findings today (Feb. 16, 2020) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle.

The researchers analyzed the kinetics of muscle movement in the human face and compared those muscle movements with a person's emotions. They found that attempts to detect or define emotions based on a person's facial expressions were almost always wrong.

"Everyone makes different facial expressions based on context and cultural background," Martinez said. "And it's important to realize that not everyone who smiles is happy. Not everyone who is happy smiles. I would even go to the extreme of saying most people who do not smile are not necessarily unhappy. And if you are happy for a whole day, you don't go walking down the street with a smile on your face. You're just happy."

It is also true, Martinez said, that sometimes, people smile out of an obligation to the social norms. This would not inherently be a problem, he said -- people are certainly entitled to put on a smile for the rest of the world -- but some companies have begun developing technology to recognize facial muscle movements and assign emotion or intent to those movements.

The research group that presented at AAAS analyzed some of those technologies and, Martinez said, largely found them lacking.

"Some claim they can detect whether someone is guilty of a crime or not, or whether a student is paying attention in class, or whether a customer is satisfied after a purchase," he said. "What our research showed is that those claims are complete baloney. There's no way you can determine those things. And worse, it can be dangerous."

The danger, Martinez said, lies in the possibility of missing the real emotion or intent in another person, and then making decisions about that person's future or abilities.

For example, consider a classroom environment, and a teacher who assumes that a student is not paying attention because of the expression on the student's face. The teacher might expect the student to smile and nod along if the student is paying attention. But maybe that student, for reasons the teacher doesn't understand -- cultural reasons, perhaps, or contextual ones -- is listening intently, but not smiling at all. It would be, Martinez argues, wrong for the teacher to dismiss that student because of the student's facial expressions.

After analyzing data about facial expressions and emotion, the research team -- which included scientists from Northeastern University, the California Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin -- concluded that it takes more than expressions to correctly detect emotion.

Facial color, for example, can help provide clues.

"What we showed is that when you experience emotion, your brain releases peptides -- mostly hormones -- that change the blood flow and blood composition, and because the face is inundated with these peptides, it changes color," Martinez said.

The human body offers other hints, too, he said: body posture, for example. And context plays a crucial role as well.

In one experiment, Martinez showed study participants a picture cropped to display just a man's face. The man's mouth is open in an apparent scream; his face is bright red.

"When people looked at it, they would think, wow, this guy is super annoyed, or really mad at something, that he's angry and shouting," Martinez said. "But when participants saw the whole image, they saw that it was a soccer player who was celebrating a goal."

In context, it's clear the man is very happy. But isolate his face, Martinez said, and he appears almost dangerous.

Cultural biases play a role, too.

"In the U.S., we tend to smile a lot," Martinez said. "We are just being friendly. But in other cultures, that means different things -- in some cultures, if you walked around the supermarket smiling at everyone, you might get smacked."

Martinez said the research group's findings could indicate that people -- from hiring managers to professors to criminal justice experts -- should consider more than just a facial expression when they evaluate another person.

And while Martinez said he is "a big believer" in developing computer algorithms that try to understand social cues and the intent of a person, he added that two things are important to know about that technology.

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Ooh là là! Music evokes 13 key emotions: Scientists have mapped them

The "Star-Spangled Banner" stirs pride. Ed Sheeran's "The Shape of You" sparks joy. And "ooh là là!" best sums up the seductive power of George Michael's "Careless Whispers."

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have surveyed more than 2,500 people in the United States and China about their emotional responses to these and thousands of other songs from genres including rock, folk, jazz, classical, marching band, experimental and heavy metal.

The upshot? The subjective experience of music across cultures can be mapped within at least 13 overarching feelings: Amusement, joy, eroticism, beauty, relaxation, sadness, dreaminess, triumph, anxiety, scariness, annoyance, defiance, and feeling pumped up.

"Imagine organizing a massively eclectic music library by emotion and capturing the combination of feelings associated with each track. That's essentially what our study has done," said study lead author Alan Cowen, a UC Berkeley doctoral student in neuroscience.

The findings are set to appear this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We have rigorously documented the largest array of emotions that are universally felt through the language of music," said study senior author Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology.

Cowen translated the data into an interactive audio map, where visitors can move their cursors to listen to any of thousands of music snippets to find out, among other things, if their emotional reactions match how people from different cultures respond to the music.

Potential applications for these research findings range from informing psychological and psychiatric therapies designed to evoke certain feelings to helping music streaming services like Spotify adjust their algorithms to satisfy their customers' audio cravings or set the mood.

While both U.S. and Chinese study participants identified similar emotions -- such as feeling fear hearing the "Jaws" movie score -- they differed on whether those emotions made them feel good or bad.

"People from different cultures can agree that a song is angry, but can differ on whether that feeling is positive or negative," said Cowen, noting that positive and negative values, known in psychology parlance as "valence," are more culture-specific.

Furthermore, across cultures, study participants mostly agreed on general emotional characterizations of musical sounds, such as angry, joyful and annoying. But their opinions varied on the level of "arousal," which refers in the study to the degree of calmness or stimulation evoked by a piece of music.

For the study, more than 2,500 people in the United States and China were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk's crowdsourcing platform.

First, volunteers scanned thousands of videos on YouTube for music evoking a variety of emotions. From those, the researchers built a collection of audio clips to use in their experiments.

Next, nearly 2,000 study participants in the United States and China each rated some 40 music samples based on 28 different categories of emotion, as well as on a scale of positivity and negativity, and for levels of arousal.

Using statistical analyses, the researchers arrived at 13 overall categories of experience that were preserved across cultures and found to correspond to specific feelings, such as being "depressing" or "dreamy."

To ensure the accuracy of these findings in a second experiment, nearly 1,000 people from the United States and China rated over 300 additional Western and traditional Chinese music samples that were specifically intended to evoke variations in valence and arousal. Their responses validated the 13 categories.

Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" made people feel energized. The Clash's "Rock the Casbah" pumped them up. Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" evoked sensuality and Israel Kamakawiwo?ole's "Somewhere over the Rainbow" elicited joy.

Meanwhile, heavy metal was widely viewed as defiant and, just as its composer intended, the shower scene score from the movie "Psycho" triggered fear.

Researchers acknowledge that some of these associations may be based on the context in which the study participants had previously heard a certain piece of music, such as in a movie or YouTube video. But this is less likely the case with traditional Chinese music, with which the findings were validated.

Cowen and Keltner previously conducted a study in which they identified 27 emotions in response to evocative YouTube video clips. For Cowen, who comes from a family of musicians, studying the emotional effects of music seemed like the next logical step.

"Music is a universal language, but we don't always pay enough attention to what it's saying and how it's being understood," Cowen said. "We wanted to take an important first step toward solving the mystery of how music can evoke so many nuanced emotions."

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