Understanding Your Reactions

John DeGonda

YOUR BRAIN, EMOTIONS, AND YOU

• Teen brain is effecting everything from schoolwork, sleep patterns, and teen’s taking risks.

• Pre Frontal cortex developing is the last to happen in a brain

• Frontal Lobe: associated with planning, decision-making, impulse control, memory, language, attention, and more

• Teens make quick impulse reactions sometimes with out thinking

• Teens act on impulses

• Testosterone surges during puberty and teens have the emotions of anger and sadness

• Hormones are not the cause of all teenage behavior

• Teenagers judgment still developing may explain the risk taking and emotions

• Teenage risk behaviors is high• Teens want to fit in with peers• Teenagers are very influenced by the media

THE TEEN BRAIN

• The teenage brain is not just an adult brain with fewer miles on it

• Adults and teenagers are using different parts of their brain to think about problems.

• Teens read facial expressions differently then adult

• Teens read anger on someone's face when they are really shocked

• Teens take more risks because they don’t for see the results as adults do

ADULTS VS. TEENS

• The sympathetic nervous system has an active "pushing" function

• The sympathetic nervous system activates what is often termed the fight or flight response

• These include pupil dilation, increased sweating, increased heart rate, and increased blood pressure

• Diverts blood flow away from the gastro-intestinal (GI) tract and skin via vasoconstriction.

• Blood flow to skeletal muscles and the lungs is enhanced (by as much as 1200% in the case of skeletal muscles).

• Dilates bronchioles of the lung, which allows for greater alveolar oxygen exchange.

• Increases heart rate and the contractility of cardiac cells (myocytes), thereby providing a mechanism for the enhanced blood flow to skeletal muscles.

• Dilates pupils and relaxes the ciliary muscle to the lens, allowing more light to enter the eye and far vision.

• Provides vasodilation for the coronary vessels of the heart.

• Constricts all the intestinal sphincters and the urinary sphincter.

• Inhibits peristalsis.

AUTONOMIC RESPONSES

• The limbic system operates by influencing the endocrine system and the autonomic nervous system.

• The James-Lange theory, conversely, asserts that first we react to a situation and then we interpret our actions into an emotional response. In this way, emotions serve to explain and organize our own actions to us.

• Arousal is important in regulating consciousness, attention, and information processing. It is crucial for motivating certain behaviors, such as mobility, the pursuit of nutrition, the fight-or-flight response

• It is also very important in emotion, and has been included as a part of many influential theories such as the James-Lange theory of emotion

LIMBIC SYSTEM & EMOTIONS

EMOTIONAL AROUSAL

MOVIE TIME!

• Emotions in the Brain

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9BErDQF3CU&feature=email

• How the Body Works : Center of Emotion and Memory

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ4mdXAtnEs&feature=email

• How the Body Works : Physical Responses to Emotion

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS_qMHPI0XM&feature=email

• Brain Anatomy

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li5nMsXg1Lk