Are we cooking reality with aroma of our emotional juices ?

We humans are emotional beings, our everyday life revolves around being happy, sad, angry, fearful, surprised or disgusted. Emotions are not easy to describe, their elusive nature challenges the rigid domain of scientific scrutiny and as a result they continue to enjoy ambiguity provided by realm of religion and philosophy.

Inspite of many bold attempts to look under the hoods and understand the underlying molecular basis, most of what we know about emotions comes from just scratching on the surface, viewing emotions through the interface provided by the facial expressions and body language.

When looking at life in a grad schema context, I take emotions just another important set of modules, modules that set the underlying molecular machinery in motion to create the desired psychological and behavioural responses, responses to address the needs imposed by our immediate environment. What we end up seeing is the phenotypic effect, the end result that is detrimental to the individual for it to survive and thrive.

These emotional routines are not new, studies suggest that the underlying basis is well conserved in most species that seem to show signs of intelligence. Of course intelligence according to the self confessed intelligent species, home sapiens, the wise ones.

I think it is not only important to understand the underpinning molecular mechanism that give rise to emotions, it is even more important to figure out what role they play in human cognition and guide our behaviour in general.

How do these routines influence what we perceive and end up shaping what we are ? It is a question that definitely deserves exploration.

But firstly why is it so important?

Our perceptions are the lenses through which we view reality, but they are mere perception and not the reality itself. What we perceive is largely pre-processed, there is no direct connection between what is ‘out there’ and its representation in the mind, so by the time any stimuli gets to our mind it is already highly pre-processed.

What we perceives as reality is a cooked up version of raw sensation, and this cooking is happening in juices secreted by our emotional routines.

So everyday reality as served on plate of our consciousness is infused with aroma of emotional juices.

I remember a dialogue from “how to train your dragon -2″

“Good dragons under the control of bad people do bad things”

I believe our emotions are kind of dragons harbouring in our body, a kind of ancient philosophy embodied within, a kind of context aware modules that spring into action as we encounter threats and opportunities while navigating the seas of life.

Pain and Pleasure has been an integral part of our emotional cocktail since time immemorial. Ancient mythical scriptures suggest pain and pleasure as central experience of life. Maximising pleasure and minimising pain has been a key goal for almost every civilisation that ever existed on the planet.

There is no shortage of myths and rituals that our ancestors choreographed over thousands of years. Each and every piece is a marvellous example of inciting pain and pleasure to fill the appetite of our never ending desires. Inflicting pain on self and others has been an important component of ancient pleasure technology that is still in use in many traditions.

So what juices are in my pain cocktail?

Rene Descartes was probably first one to bring pain into the realm of modern science. He talked about pain being a disturbance that passes down the nerve fibers until it reaches the head. One of his illustration shows sequence of events when a body part is exposed to extreme heat, a particle of heat activates a sensory spot on the skin. He showed the spot connected by a fine thread to the brain, so using the connection sensation travels to the brain and opens a valve through which animal spirits are released. The spirits flow to the affected part and the part that responds by pulling itself away from heat.

Not a bad attempt for circa 1664….Unfortunately many traditions are still stuck in Rene’e times and continue to exploit animal spirits to address pain.

Thanks to recent advances in neuroscience we now have a much better understanding of pain and pleasure pathways.

Now we know that perception of pain starts in tiny receptors embedded in our peripheral nerves. Transient Receptor Potential Vanilloid Subtype 1, in short TRPV1, commonly known as capsaicin receptor is one such receptor.

TRPV1 can detect multiple stimuli ranging from various presence of noxious compounds, acidic situations, change in temperature as well as electromagnetic waves of different ranges.

When TRPV1 comes in contact with heat it opens the channel gates on nerve cells and as a result Sodium and Calcium flows through the gates and creates an action potential. Action potential is passed on to the upstream nerve cells where it flows all the way to the pain and pleasure centre of the brain where it does it magic by taking an immediate decisions to send instructions to the site of stimulus.

Interesting enough that TRPV1 protein has a specific binding site for capsaicin, a chemical compound abundant in capsicum. So the heat sensation from chilies is triggered by same mechanism that detects heat when we touch a hot surface. We no longer need to blame English language for such a confusing English lexicon, chillies are hot because they literally feel hot to our senses. Moreover we eat chillies for pleasure, no wonder pain and pleasure pathways are intertwined as well.

TRPV1 protein is coded by gene TRPV1 and these receptor are widespread throughout various tissues and organs in the body (kidney, lung, testis, pancreas, spleen, liver, stomach. skin, vascular smooth muscle, placenta, cornea, uterus, and bladder) and brain ( cerebellum, hippocampus, and frontal cortex).

The gene responsible for this receptor is well conserved, in other words is present and active in many species. Birds don’t have this gene, that is why you can feed chillies to birds and they will eat it like apples. Birds play a key role in spreading chilli seed, another interesting example of co-adaptation in nature. Scientists in laboratory experiments have knocked down TRPV1 gene in mouse and found that they ended up drinking water interlaced with chillies just like normal water.

I guess nature had no idea that one day chili’s defence mechanism will become an important trait to promote its consumption. That is why nature is very difficult to understand because these border and barriers in nature are so dynamic. Who knows when a predator becomes a promoter, anyway the prey, predator, mate questions make sense at specie level not at individual level.

Enough about chilies, if chilies are not hot enough there is another plant that is worth having a look in this context and that plant is poppy. Poppy is a flowering plant famous for the crude drug opium, its juices contain alkaloids like morphine.

Morphine been around since time immemorial, archaeologists have discovered evidence in form of clay tablets dating back as far as 5,000 BC with reference to cultivation and use of plants like poppy to bring joy to life and address symptoms of pain.

But how does it fit in our quest for juices of our emotional cocktail. Well morphine, works using a similar mechanism like chillies by binding to its receptors. Our body is laden with them almost each and every organ in human body is full of opiate receptors where morphine can bind and do its wonder.

What the heck is morphine receptor doing in our body ?

Well that is another rabbit hole to explore…

Originally published at scriptgrandeur.wordpress.com on April 3, 2015.