Why do some songs - take Adele's hit pop song Someone Like You, for example - bring us to tears?

Science came up with the formula why certain songs can induce strong emotions in people:

When the music suddenly breaks from its expected pattern, our sympathetic nervous system goes on high alert; our hearts race and we start to sweat. Depending on the context, we interpret this state of arousal as positive or negative, happy or sad.

If "Someone Like You" produces such intense sadness in listeners, why is it so popular? Last year, Robert Zatorre and his team of neuroscientists at McGill University reported that emotionally intense music releases dopamine in the pleasure and reward centers of the brain, similar to the effects of food, sex and drugs. This makes us feel good and motivates us to repeat the behavior.

Measuring listeners' responses, Dr. Zatorre's team found that the number of goose bumps observed correlated with the amount of dopamine released, even when the music was extremely sad. The results suggest that the more emotions a song provokes—whether depressing or uplifting—the more we crave the song.

Michaeleen Doucleff of The Wall Street Journal has more: Link

How are you feeling today? If your emotional state doesn’t lend itself easily to words, how about this handy dandy Internet Chart of Emotions?

See also: The Daily Mood Flipchart

It’s common knowledge that people from different culture act differently, but according to Takahiko Masuda of the University of Alberta, they think differently as well. For example, here’s how Westerners and Asians interpret the two pictures above:

“North Americans try to identify the single important thing that is key to making a decision,” explains Dr. Takahiko Masuda, the study’s author, over the phone from his office at the University of Alberta. “In East Asia they really care about the context.”

He studied the eye movement of Americans and Japanese when analyzing a picture of a group of cartoon people. When asked to interpret the emotion of the person in the center, the Japanese looked at the person for about one second before moving on to the people in the background. They needed to know how the group was feeling before understanding the emotion of the individual.

The Americans (and Canadians in subsequent studies) focused 95% of their attention on the person in the center. Only 5% of their attention was focused on the background, and this, Dr. Masuda points out, didn’t influence their interpretation of the central figure’s emotion. For North Americans the foreground is all-important.

Link – via Holy Kaw!

It’s easy to fall in love with this photo series from Vlad Artazov. With only bent nails and some basic sets, he is able to convey a whole spectrum of human emotions. The result is beautiful and surprisingly, sadly touching. View the whole gallery to get the full effect.

Link

After a thorough analysis of the emotional state of Wolverine in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman, AlwaysWatching blog came to this irrefutable conclusion: Hugh Jackman has many nuanced facial expressions. Take a look: Link