Hurting? "Put Your Feelings Into Words"

Lieberman's findings are based on studies in which healthy subjects lie in an MRI machine and view emotionally evocative pictures, such as scared or angry faces. Study participants touch a button corresponding to a word that expresses that emotion. When study subjects put feelings into words in this way, the researchers noted increased brain activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain region known for dampening negative emotions.
At the same time, they saw decreases in activity in the amygdala, the brain machinery responsible for processing feelings about relationships and emotions like fear, rage and aggression. Lieberman said this may explain why many teenagers and others take up pen and paper when they are filled with angst. "I think it certainly could play a role in why people of any age write diaries or bad lyrics to songs," he said. "That is certainly a possibility." Lieberman said he is now doing studies to see how putting words into feelings might help people who fear spiders or have anxiety disorders.
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