Imagine someone cuts you off in traffic. Before you have time to think, irritation rises, your heart rate increases and you feel an urge to react. Perhaps you shout or make an angry gesture. A few minutes later, you wonder: Why did I react that way? Could I have responded differently?
We often assume that emotions are something we experience and reason is what controls them. Neuroscience suggests a more complex relationship. Our emotions do not merely influence how we feel; they play an important role in how we think, decide and behave.
The brain's emotional compass
In the PBS NOVA documentary Your Brain: Who's in Control?, neuroscientist Luke Chang explores how emotions such as guilt influence decision-making.
One important brain region discussed is the insula, which plays a significant role in processing bodily sensations, emotional experiences and decision-making.
Consider a situation in which you have an opportunity to gain financially at someone else's expense. You might experience an uncomfortable feeling, almost an internal warning, that what you are contemplating is not right.
The insula is involved in processing such internal signals. These signals, together with activity in other brain regions, can influence our decisions and encourage us to avoid harming others.
The documentary offers an interesting analogy: the insula acts like a thermometer, registering what is happening within us, while the prefrontal cortex functions more like a thermostat, helping regulate our responses.
This is a simplified analogy, but it illustrates an important principle: recognising an emotion and regulating our response to it are two different processes.
When the regulator is damaged
One of the most fascinating historical cases in neuroscience is that of Phineas Gage.
In 1848, Gage, a railway construction foreman, survived a horrific accident in which an iron rod passed through his skull, damaging parts of his frontal brain.
Remarkably, he retained many abilities, including speech, memory and movement. Yet people who knew him noticed profound changes in his personality and behaviour. He became impulsive, socially inappropriate and struggled to manage his life.
Subsequent research by neuroscientist Hanna Damasio and colleagues reconstructed the likely extent of his brain injury. Their findings helped establish the importance of the prefrontal cortex in rational decision-making and emotional processing.
The case demonstrated something remarkable: a person may retain intellectual abilities and yet struggle with judgement, emotional regulation and appropriate social behaviour.
Viveka: The power of discernment
This brings us to an interesting connection with Indian wisdom.
In Vedantic philosophy, Viveka means discernment: the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, beneficial and harmful. At a deeper philosophical level, it also refers to discrimination between the real and the unreal.
The prefrontal cortex plays a major role in the neurological processes that make rational judgement possible. It is involved in evaluating consequences, weighing alternatives, inhibiting impulses, planning and regulating behaviour.
We can therefore see a meaningful functional correspondence between the prefrontal cortex and the exercise of Viveka. The former provides an important neurological foundation for the cognitive processes through which discernment is exercised.
The Bhagavad Gita, in Chapter 2, Verse 63, describes how anger can lead to delusion, loss of memory and the destruction of Buddhi (intellect or discriminative understanding).
The philosophical insight is profound: when emotions overwhelm our capacity for discernment, we may act against our own understanding of what is right.
We may know what we should do, but fail to do it.
Self-governance is not the absence of emotions. It is the ability to recognise them, understand their influence and exercise discernment before choosing how to respond.
A question to carry forward
If our emotions, decisions and behaviour are shaped by the intricate workings of our brain, how much of our personality is actually our own creation?
How much of who we are has been shaped by our childhood, family, relationships, culture and environment?
In Part 4: How Much of You Is Actually You?
References and further reading
- NOVA/PBS, Your Brain: Who's in Control? — primary documentary inspiration.
- Damasio, H. et al. (1994). The Return of Phineas Gage: Clues About the Brain from the Skull of a Famous Patient. Science, 264, 1102–1105.
- Brudzynski, S. M., Burgdorf, J. & Moskal, J. (2024). From Emotional Arousal to Executive Action: Role of the Prefrontal Cortex. Brain Structure and Function, 229, 2327–2338.
- Zhang, R. et al. (2024). The Insular Cortex: An Interface Between Sensation, Emotion and Cognition. Neuroscience Bulletin.
- Bhagavad Gita, 2.63.