Which animal cries

In humans, one of the subcortical structures that may be involved in crying is the limbic system, which is central in motivation and emotional behavior. Experiments in which lesions are made in mammal brains suggest that the cingulate gyrus, an evolutionarily newer part of the limbic system, is involved both in infant crying and in maternal behavior.

In , Panksepp and his group observed the effect of several psychoactive drugs on the distress calls of rat pups. Drugs such as chlorpromazine, reserpine, meprobamate, diazepam, alcohol, pento-barbital, and amphetamine did not reduce these distress calls when the rat pups were separated from their mothers, but social stimuli such as contact with siblings did inhibit them. Opiates such as morphine, however, were strong inhibitors.

Through research on the brain basis of emotions such as fear and aggression, we know that there are many pathways from the limbic system to the hypothalamus, mesencephalon, and brain stem. We may speculate that these pathways are also involved in the expression of crying. For more than a century, for example, we have known that when patients sustain damage to one hemisphere of the brain, their emotional reactions change markedly. Using several brain-imaging technologies, Davidson found that the left prefrontal cortex participates with other structures in a circuit important for certain types of positive emotion.

Davidson and a co-researcher, Nathan A. The month old babies who cried during brief separation from their mothers showed greater EEG activation in the right frontal brain, in comparison with the babies who did not cry.

Crying is a universal human phenomenon, but researchers have repeatedly shown that where, when, and how people cry varies not only with their sex, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and individual psychology, but also with socioeconomic conditions, level of education, family traditions, religious beliefs, and even occupation. For author and psychotherapist Jeffrey A. People from different places speak unique dialects in their tearfulness and have different attitudes toward emotional expression…Some cultures encourage tearful expression as healthy and socially appropriate in certain circumstances, while others suppress crying with a vengeance.

To a large degree, cultural rules learned early in our childhood govern our control over our emotions. It is widely observed, for example, that people from the Mediterranean and Near East such as Italians, Arabs, and Jews tend to be less restrained in their emotions than people from Northern latitudes such as Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians.

Among the latter, showing tears in public is deterred by the cultural assumption that weeping and crying are manifestations of weakness and inferiority. An extreme example of this inhibition of crying can be found in Asia, where the Minangkabu people of Indonesia are absolutely forbidden to show any signs of sadness. They never cry. Even within a culture, social rules permitting crying may vary. Generally, women are far less socially controlled in expressing grief and pain by crying and are encouraged to do so in many social situations, such as funerals.

For these women, crying is a cultural event, expected to occur. With few exceptions, funeral rites in all cultures include open crying. Inhabitants of Bali, however, rarely cry, even in bereavement and pain. Children in Bali may make crying noises, but do not shed tears.

There are great differences in the ways the predominant religions in the West and East treat death. In the United States, for example, about 20 percent of crying is related to bereavement; in Japan, only 5 percent. Styles of crying range from silent, expressionless tears, to loud weeping and wailing, to continuous or convulsive sobbing. Culture appears to dictate these styles, and when they are used.

Kottler cites the Makonde, a Bantu tribe of Tanzania, who cry in explosive, sirenlike bursts. Upon a biological basis of emotional expression the lexicon are imposed the social rules and norms the grammar of crying. What strikes us most about what we know and do not know about crying is that this important human phenomenon has won scant attention from scientists.

We have no credible, overarching model for understanding crying, and, so far, research on the brain mechanisms of crying has been pitifully small. Ancient Greek culture symbolized the theater with two masks, one laughing, one crying. Indeed, these are the dominant emotional expressions in human beings, and both have a communicative function, one positive, one negative. But what do they have in common? Crying and laughing share central and peripheral expressive mechanisms in our brains and bodies.

Both involve a complex interaction among the prefrontal cortex, limbic system, and the muscles and glands of the embryonic third branchial arch. The communicative role of crying and tears, as of smiling and laughing, is underlined by how easily they are understood by the intended receivers. Konrad Lorenz, a founder of the study of behavior, proposed that the immature anatomical features of children make them cute and likable to adults by means of patterns that have powerful emotional and help-eliciting effects.

Cartoon animal characters, such as Mickey Mouse, make use of these facial patterns, as Stephen Jay Gould wryly observed. Laughter and crying may converge in the early development of our brains. We require many years to install intelligence, thought, and language in the immature brain with which we are born. Natural evolution may have favored children with those traits because they enhanced survival and reproduction.

Crying and laughing persist into later life because they are indispensable in expressing positive and negative feelings, inhibiting aggression, promoting social contact, and eliciting cooperative and helpful behavior. In this may lie the overarching explanation of both. What really matters about crying and laughing is understanding their roles in our lives. They are the unique human way of expressing strong emotions and convey a sense of commonality among all human beings.

Are those who perform before the public—hundreds, thousands, even millions of spectators at a time—at heightened risk of mental illness? The Brain Prize went to four individuals whose independent research led to useful treatments for a disorder affecting a billion people.

A sampling of work by Dana Simmons, Ph. A psychiatrist falls seriously ill, and considers anew the dogma not to share details of one's life with one's patients. Our authors, who study successful aging and mental illnesses at the University of California, San Diego, address the much-debated, complicated question that many of us have long wondered about: Does the brain improve with age?

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Back to Parent Page. Share This Page. References Masson, J. New York. Feasibility of using fMRI to study mothers responding to infant cries. Depression and Anxiety. Frey, WH, Langseth, M. After a tour of the literature on crying and a detailed assessment of the putative neural circuitry of emotion, he moves on to an exploration of how emotional crying may have evolved. It starts with the bawling of infants, which is not so different from the distress cries of other animals.

So begins our lifelong attraction to faces, and the emotions that play across them. Trimble uses tragedy to make his case that neural and social phenomena may have co-evolved to produce our, at times, cathartic tears.

That is, once we realised that crying provided a sort of solace, we devised ways to prompt this experience on demand. Among the areas of the brain whose activation may prompt tears of tragic joy are the medial and lateral prefrontal cortex — key to the experience of empathy.

Actually, more than 30 states have so honored modern square dancing. And therein lies a quintessential American tale of Starting in , modern-square-dance associations advocated for it to be designated the national folk dance. The dance lobbyists redirected their efforts to the states and found more success there. Yes, unobtainium refers to a material that could make faster-than-light space travel possible.

The term has been in use since at least the s.