The Biology of Belief - Bruce H. Lipton [56]
Emotions: Feeling the Language of Cells
In higher, more aware life forms, the brain developed a specialization that enabled the whole community to tune into the status of its regulatory signals. The evolution of the limbic system provided a unique mechanism that converted the chemical communication signals into sensations that could be experienced by all of the cells in the community. Our conscious mind experiences these signals as emotions. The conscious mind not only “reads” the flow of the cellular coordinating signals that comprise the body’s “mind” it can also generate emotions, which are manifested through the controlled release of regulatory signals by the nervous system.
At the same time that I was studying the mechanics of the cell’s brain and gaining insight into the operation of the human brain, Candace Pert was studying the human brain and becoming aware of the mechanics of the cell’s brain. In Molecules of Emotion, Pert revealed how her study of information-processing receptors on nerve cell membranes led her to discover that the same “neural” receptors were present on most, if not all, of the body’s cells. Her elegant experiments established that the “mind” was not focused in the head but was distributed via signal molecules to the whole body. As importantly, her work emphasized that emotions were not only derived through a feedback of the body’s environmental information. Through self-consciousness, the mind can use the brain to generate “molecules of emotion” and override the system. While proper use of consciousness can bring health to an ailing body, inappropriate unconscious control of emotions can easily make a healthy body diseased, a topic I will expand upon in Chapters 6 and 7. Molecules of Emotion is a very insightful book describing the scientific discovery process. It also provides some revealing insights into the struggles encountered when trying to introduce new “ideas” into science’s Old Boys Club, a subject with which I am all too familiar! (Pert 1997)
The limbic system offered a major evolutionary advance through its ability to sense and coordinate the flow of behavior-regulating signals within the cellular community. As the internal signal system evolved, its greater efficiency enabled the brain to increase in size. Multicellular organisms gained increasingly more cells that were dedicated to responding to an ever-wider variety of external environmental signals. While individual cells can respond to simple sensory perceptions such as red, round, aromatic, and sweet, the extra brainpower available in multicellular animals enables them to combine those simple sensations into a higher level of complexity and perceive “apple.”
Fundamental reflex behaviors acquired through evolution are passed on to offspring in the form of genetic-based instincts. The evolution of larger brains, with their increased neural cell population, offered organisms the opportunity not only to rely on instinctual behavior, but also to learn from their life experiences. The learning of novel reflex behaviors is essentially a product of conditioning. For example, consider the classic example of Pavlov training his dogs to salivate at the ring of a bell. He first trained them by ringing a bell and coupling that stimulus with a food reward. After awhile, he would ring the bell but not offer the food. By that time, the dogs were so programmed to expect the food that when the bell rang, they reflexively started to salivate even though no food was present. This is clearly an “unconscious,” learned reflex behavior.
Reflex behaviors may be as simple as the spontaneous kick of the leg when a mallet taps the knee or as complex as driving a car at sixty-five miles per hour on a crowded interstate highway