https://youtu.be/XfURDjegrAw

Goal

Understand the biology of the pathways that give rise to emotions/moods - in the context of food and nutrition, tools to regulate/change emotions if you want using those pathways

• Emotions (happy, sad, depressed, etc.) are central to our life experience. Still, there is very little understanding of how emotions arise in our brain and body.
• Emotions really capture the brain-body connection. It is not just something that happens in our heads. It captures biological + chemical events within our body.
• Tips for regulating emotions like “just smile” don’t work otherwise there wouldn’t be any depressed people + it is scientifically incorrect.
• We’ll understand how ingesting certain macronutrients (carbs, proteins and fats) as well as micronutrients can impact the chemicals in our brain that give rise to feelings of being happy or sad or sleepy or alert.

Emotions as actions, universal and a push-pull

• Darwin: Emotions are universal and facial expressions around emotions are universal
• Some truth to that: when we see/smell/taste something that we like, there is a postural leaning in, we tend to inhale air at the time (the “ummmmmm”s), in order to inhale more of those chemicals. When we see/smell/taste something that we don’t like, we tend to lean back/look away, which can sometimes even be an intense feeling of disgust followed by cringe in our face, in order to avoid inhaling more of those chemicals. These are ancient biological mechanisms that prevent us from ingesting things that are bad for us: chemical compounds and tastes that might be poisonous.
• A basic view of emotions: they involve attraction to certain things and aversion from others. This kind of push-pull mechanisms are present everywhere from the deep circuits of the brain to the higher-order, more evolved areas of the brain.
• Attraction: Delight, happiness, excitement to certain people, things, ideas, songs, food. Aversion: leaning out, disgust, avoidance
• Key: there is always an action involved - either you’re moving forward or away from something. And action (motor behaviour) involves contraction of muscles to move us away or toward something. And talking about nerve → muscle → action requires talking about the brain and the body. Brain can’t move on its own and so, it has a body. Body has a brain so that it can move away/toward whatever we deem to be bad or good for us.
• Some attractions and aversions are hard-wired. E.g. we tend to avoid really bitter compounds as they tend to be associated with poisons, we tend to pursue things that are sweet/savoury
• Thus, there are circuits in the brain for aversion and attraction toward things and the body governs a lot of that.

The Vagus Nerve

• Extremely important nerve pathway that tends to be oversold for the wrong reasons and undersold for the right reasons.
• Vagus nerve is one way in which the brain and body is connected and regulates our emotional states.