Blog #1

This week, I read an article about how the brain creates all of our emotions. This article called Sad Brain, Happy Brain was from Newsweek and was written by Michael Craig Miller. "Neuroscientists consider it settled that the mind arises from the cooperation of billions of interconnected cells that, individually, are no smarter than an amoebae" (53). It is amazing how emotions, simple like sadness and happiness, or complex like jealousy and love, are all created by a bunch of individual brain cells working together. What is even more amazing is that complex emotions, for example jealousy and love, only use certain parts of the brain, while simpler emotions, like being happy or sad, use over 70 different parts. One thing I found esecially interesting about this article was how the brain recognizes harmful situations and sends fear through your body. The brain analyses the environment and registers emotional significance and sends the body the proper response. The fear system works really fast; you don't even need to know whats going on to have fear. If a car swerves into your lane, you would be afraid of it before the visual brain has chance to see what is going on. I found that to be very interesting; even when you don't know what is happening consciously, your brain does. This must be an instinct we humans have had from the beginning of time to help us survive. I really enjoyed reading this article and learning about how our brains work because it is very interesting to me to learn more about myself and how our bodies work.