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- Glossary
Emotions
Neuroscientists understand "emotions" to be complex response patterns that include experiential, physiological, and behavioral components. They arise in response to personally relevant or significant events and generate a willingness to act, through which the individual attempts to deal with the situation. Emotions typically occur with subjective experience (feeling), but differ from pure feeling in that they involve conscious or implicit engagement with the environment. Emotions arise in the limbic system, among other places, which is a phylogenetically ancient part of the brain. Psychologist Paul Ekman has defined six cross-cultural basic emotions that are reflected in characteristic facial expressions: joy, anger, fear, surprise, sadness, and disgust.
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- Question to the brain
What is transgenerational trauma?
How are traumas passed on to subsequent generations? What happens in the brain during this process?
12.05.2024
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- Smell & Taste
Fragrant Brands
Companies are focusing on the sense of smell in their marketing: fragrances are intended to bind customers to the brand.
03.07.2025
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- Percieve
- Smell & Taste
Neurogastronomy – the New Science of Taste
Neurogastronomy explores how the brain makes humans gourmets.
02.09.2025
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- Percieve
- Smell & Taste
Smell and Taste – often underestimated
The role that smells and tastes play in our everyday lives.
06.09.2025
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- News
- Question to the brain
What does Heat do to the Brain?
I have read that heat waves can affect mental health. How so? Can this also affect healthy people?
22.07.2024
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- News from the Institutes
How does our brain regulate generosity?
The “basolateral amygdala”, a part of the limbic system, plays an important role in this.
14.04.2025
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The Team
20.03.2017
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- Glossary
Facial expressions
Five muscle groups control the visible movements on the surface of our faces – and this applies to everyone in the world. Neuroscientists emphasize universal, evolutionarily anchored reactions as the reason for this. For this reason, the basic emotions of fear, anger, disgust, sadness, surprise, and joy leave similar traces on the face everywhere, which we can usually identify reliably even in strangers.
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- Emotions
Researching Disgust
Does disgust protect us from pathogens, or is it the most malicious of all emotions?
25.10.2025
