What happens to our bodies when we feel social emotions?

Feeling emotions based on the interactions we have with other people is a common part of daily life, yet we know very little about how these emotions are experienced in the body.

Chloe Stewart, a PhD candidate at Lawson Health Research Institute (Lawson) and Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, has been awarded a Lawson Internal Research Fund (IRF) Studentship to conduct the first study to comprehensively explore the physical experience of social emotions. The study will be supervised by Dr. Elizabeth Finger, a Lawson scientist, neurologist at St. Joseph’s Health Care London’s Parkwood Institute, and associate professor at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry.

“We feel social emotions based on our awareness, interpretation or anticipation of the thoughts and feelings of others. For example, we feel embarrassment not only because we have done something potentially embarrassing, but also because we know that another person is aware of it, or could become aware of it. Other social emotions include pride, empathy and guilt,” explains Stewart.

“These are distinct from basic emotions, such as anger and happiness, which only require us to be aware of how we ourselves are feeling and can occur completely independently of other people. Whether it’s your heart beating faster when you’re angry or the lump in your throat when you’re sad, the ways that our bodies experience basic emotions are very well understood. However, we do not have a good understanding of what happens to our bodies when we feel social emotions,” she adds.

Unhealthy levels of certain social emotions are associated with many conditions, including certain kinds of dementia, obsessive compulsive disorder and psychopathy. The results of the study, which will be conducted at Parkwood Institute, could help in developing potential interventions or treatment approaches to restore these emotions to healthy levels.

The first phase of the study will look at the physical experience of social emotion in healthy adults. Noninvasive electrodes will be attached to participants’ torso, hands and throat. The electrodes are connected by wires to receivers, which in turn send signals to a computer. The researchers can assess how the signals change based on the stimulus the participant is looking at. Stewart expects the emotions will influence several different physical responses, including heart rate, swallowing rate and movement of the stomach muscles.

The research team will then extend the study to patients with frontotemporal dementia, which can impair social functioning. They will compare the physical experience of social emotions in these participants to participants with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. Patients with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia with Lewy bodies usually have healthy levels of social emotions, but those who have dementia with Lewy bodies often have impaired physiological functioning while those with Alzheimer’s do not.

Their goal is to compare how social emotions look in healthy adults to what happens in the body when social functioning is impaired.

The IRF is designed to provide Lawson scientists and students the opportunity to obtain start-up funds for new projects with the potential to obtain larger funding, be published in a high-impact journal, or provide a clinical benefit to patients. Funding is provided by the clinical departments of London Health Sciences Centre and St. Joseph’s Health Care London, as well as the hospital foundations (London Health Sciences Foundation and St. Joseph’s Health Care Foundation).