Like how artists uses paints, textures, and materials to create their artwork, nature “uses” molecules and their respective atoms to create the biological entities that we recognize around us.
I’d like to begin a series of essays on the details of how the current understanding of chemistry relates to human emotion and psychology, and how this knowledge can be used to develop new medicines. My professional and academic work has long intertwined with the theme, including being a subset of my doctoral research into pain relief. Despite pain being one of the most high priority “emotions” to find treatments for, desirable and effective medicines are still very much lacking. The same could be said about other emotions. By re-assessing the problem and approach with medicines, I believe we can get to better results in the clinic. Scientists have spent many decades of research investigating how the rules and properties of chemistry, biology, and psychology “emerge” from their core subfields. I believe by highlighting the distinct emergent properties and tracing their scientific significance, a new perspective on the topic of chemistry and emotion is possible. Hopefully one day this new perspective can help yield exciting new research.
In the most literal sense, properties of chemistry, biology, and psychology mutually influence one another. A psychologically bad day can metamorphize into an unpleasant neurochemical balance, but an external molecule can also shift a subject’s biology and lift a subject’s morale even if only temporary through chemical adjustments. The result is a system where words have chemical power; power to adjust our chemistry, our biology, and our psychology as well. Conversely, a molecule can “unlock” an improved mental state in a person if consumed properly. Before diving into the signficance of emergent properties, however, I will define what is really meant by “emotions” in this analysis.
What are human emotions?
The understanding of human emotion and its physical functions is a key tool in living a balanced life. Prior to advanced chemical technologies, human emotion was studied in various holistic contexts since ancient times. This study has developed in the forms of poetry, literature, and philosophy. Many of the great literary and philosophical works reflect this pondering of human emotions. In the modern age, technology has enabled a new, “scientific” analysis of human emotion on a remarkably precise level. The results, not surprisingly, have demonstrated that the emotional experience of mankind is a very complicated subject matter. Indeed, despite the many insights of chemistry regarding emotion, chemistry cannot fully explain or provide treatments to mental phenomena. Due to the nature of emergent properties, a separate field of study termed psychology has arisen to understand phenomena that cannot be explained by intermolecular forces in the body or biological patterns observed in nature. Thus, it is interesting to reflect on how the fields of psychology, and more generally liberal arts, explain human emotion in contrast to a field like chemistry. In a certain sense, this mirrors the ancient question of the mind-body duality. In this post, the question of how human emotion emerges from physical pieces, yet also transcends them, will be explored from a scientific and heuristic point of view. By considering how great intellectuals have approached and attempted to solve the mystery of human emotional experience, one can gain deeper insight into life and extract greater satisfaction from one’s existence. The body and the mind are ultimately very deeply connected, and the sophistication of human emotion undoubtedly emerges from the complexity of the human brain. At first glance, the human brain resembles some type of computer, taking in information from the environment and giving outputs in the form of emotions, which ultimately lead to decision making. A human being is nevertheless very different from a mechanical computer because humans have information encoded both electrically and chemically. The chemicals which affect the brain are thus one of the two key phenomena to understand when investigating human emotion. It is this aspect of chemistry that I will investigate to advance novel ideas about how emotions can be adjusted by chemistry.
