The brain circuits that are activated for emotions may actually be the same for sorrow and joy. This discovery was made recently by Mario Beauregard and his team in the radiology department at the Université de Montréal faculty of medicine. The results of his research caused quite a stir when presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience last November in San Diego.

"Our original hypothesis suggested that sorrow and joy were processed in different ways by what is known as the limbic system, which is generally recognized as the center of the emotions," says Dr. Beauregard. "But nuclear magnetic resonance imaging showed instead that it's the same brain circuits that process these opposite emotions."

Beauregard doesn't mean to suggest that there's no physical or chemical difference in the brain when we laugh at a good joke or cry over love's labors lost. "We'll have to carry our research further and describe the differences on a more microscopic scale. Our equipment hasn't been able to register these differences yet," Dr. Beauregard explains.

The methodology used to obtain these results is remarkable in itself. For his subjects, Dr. Beauregard chose 11 professional actors. After spending a week preparing their roles, the actors were put into an MRI scanner capable of "filming" their brain activity. "These actors are able to let a feeling of sadness come over them to the point where they shed real tears," says Dr. Beauregard. "We asked them to render both emotions in succession, but with enough of a break in between to let us observe their brain in action."

In teaching the actor's art and craft, there are two opposing schools. The Stanislavsky Method of the Actors Studio demands that actors draw forth the emotions they represent from the well of personal memory and experience. The other approach recommends the exact opposite - pure simulation without links to "lived experience." The 11 actors scanned, all products of the Conservatoire d'art dramatique du Québec, were "Method" actors of the first school. The subjects - five men and six women with five to 15 years experience in film, television and theater - were asked to rate their own state of self-suggestion on a scale of 0 to 8.

Research on the "emotional brain" (the orbito-frontal cortex, hippocampus, temporal lobe, prefrontal cortex and amygdala) has grown dramatically in the past few years. Usually, however, emotions as different as joy, fear, anger, surprise or sadness are treated separately. The originality of the Beauregard team's research lies in their assembling research subjects who can experience great joy and pain in rapid succession... while holding up their brains for all the world to see.

Researcher: Mario Beauregard
Phone: (514) 340-3540, local 4129
Funding: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)