Emotions, music, vomit.

Have you ever been listening to music and gotten so caught up in the melody and the lyrics that it affects you emotionally?

Perhaps you have smelt a food or perfume that reminded you of a pleasant time in your past, leaving a smile on your face and a warm feeling inside?

Why is it when we smell vomit we feel like throwing up ourselves??? (If you are like me you might be cringing by now).  

The answer to all these questions directly relate to an ancient, but highly sophisticated section of our brain called the limbic system. 

The limbic system, and its three biggest players, the amygdala, hippocampus and hypothalamus drive our emotions, feelings, and moods. It is these systems that give us some of the experiences described above and enrich our lives. Can you imagine how boring life would be without emotion? Love, anger, happiness and sorrow are the colour and shades of the landscape artwork of our existence.

The key reasons why music, smell associations and the pungent smell of vomit have such an indelible effect upon our experience is intrinsically linked to the hippocampus, a structure in the brain primarily responsible for emotional memory recall. 

The reason why we recognise certain smells as good or bad, pleasant or disgusting, relates to our survival instinct. When we smell vomit, there is a memory recall from the hippocampus that this particular smell signifies threat…so our stomachs purge to protect us.

Now music is a little more interesting. Why do some songs make us sad and others make us happy? Once again, the hippocampus relates a song to the emotional encoding that took place when we first heard that piece of music. So for Darren, embarrassingly, when he hears anything from 80’s super-group Def Leppard, he immediately become morose because it reminds him of his first broken heart! Whereas whenever Alison hears a Wiggles song she feels joy because it reminds her of the precious times she has spent unashamedly dancing around the lounge room with Patrick as a 2 year old (Kate is a Dora fan!). And for Victoria, she feels happy and elated every time she hears a song by The Go Team as it reminds her of when she spent 5 months in the French Alps doing a snow season.

Thank God for our emotions…they make our lives awesome! 

If you are intrigued to learn more about how we develop, and more importantly how we can better deal with emotions in the workplace then you need to come along to our “Emotions in the Workplace” program held on Tuesday 28th Feb, 9am – 4:30pm.

Yours,

Darren & Alison

THE GIFT: This week's gift is a video from Genos International which provides up with some insightful statisics on employee motivation.  Do you know how engaged your employees are? Click here to watch it.