I could not find an answer to my question in academic literature so I hope someone who has training in neuroscience or know of research articles that answer this question can help. I was wondering if neuronal activity associated with emotions that we feel localised in our bodies (i.e. excitement or fear in the stomach) can be detected using existing methods like MRI or something else. And if such activity could have distinct pattern or dynamics. The ultimate question is to look for such neuronal activities in animals as an evidence that they do have emotions. This could prove consciousness (whether of a similar or different degree) in animals, at the same time bypassing the problem that we do not understand the mechanism of consciousness. The point is that why have emotions like we do without something out there to feel them. Because although consciousness is tended to be interpreted as a characteristic of high intelligence associated with humans, I believe that the fact that we consiously feel these emotions hints at an evolutionary function of consciousness that is not tied with thought and intelligence and therefore seems more “primitive” so that it could be a widespread conserved mechanism in higher animals. There are many indirect hints at their emotions like responding “subjective” behaviour to emotions similar to us e.g. trembling in fear, love partners rubbing faces like in parrots for example. What I ultimately mean is that it is more probable that consciousness and associated feelings (including feeling pain) are an evolutionary mechanism older than humans that is conserved in us, because it is not associated with what makes humans distinct from out closest non-human ancestor. What makes us distinct is increased problem solving, logic and most importantly complex language that allowed technical and scientific progress to build up and evolve, I think this is what makes humans unique and not conscious feeling of fear or love and for that matter consciousness at all. This is an interesting question to answer experimentally and if animals are conscious then cattle needs much better treatment, also decreasing meat consumptions can reduce pandemics occurrence and CO2 emissions.
There exist systems for measuring the myoelectric activity of the stomach and that could be used to examine the effects of emotional stimulation.
Check out:
Article Human gastric myoelectric activity and gastric emptying foll...
or
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/47195099/a_3A101885201185720160712-16280-roq9x2.pdf?1468352557=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DCase_Report_Electrical_Stimulation_at_a.pdf&Expires=1601904685&Signature=P5qlq11F8ORNYnfIhgjQvp2OK6HQidmfb6ZUBtWSzwAPSzkVyPvxxTDibDoaxDyPecH-NVJolgZ3IeivPOVR-Jr2WVUMq2GYhbt~uVQWYKnEkMK3SIM1F1-acyOZ-U90CGX70AriDPlMlKpZS6w~WuaofvR7foHfe0V3ge9Cttg7Q2PgkBvFIqV2MYKbmelf9kFfznfS0ZEb3lVCrG8z~kZGfjCFsoO~-p1VmFaoc3mglJNomOsHfPb6G6JLSqjwbjhFUxITxHvshRwGb0UlyMpMoYeDYvSNg72zLC7rG-OB2KMs59tg0bM5sP-VvUYiCH5yURXIph1mIRRwHDYfJQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
or
other references to electrogastography
such as:
Article Pacing the human stomach
or many others
https://search.proquest.com/docview/215138074?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true
take another look.
Gerry Leisman thank you Sir, I am not doing neuroscience unfortunately, but I hope to suggest someone to do this research, another step for animal rights, of course meat substitutes like Impossible Foods have a considerable way to cut their prices, but the path is being paved.
and lots of luck to you then. I gave animal work for that reason thirty years ago.
Hello, The increase in intensive farming mean there is a lot of work being done on monitoring animal welfare using remote sensor technology. Targeting the agri-food literature, particularly intensive dairy farming and broiler chicken welfare, may be more fruitful?.
this would be fascinating, as truly stomach/solar plexus is equivalent to the eastern wisdom of Solar Plexus chakra - the seat of emotions and ego control. good luck xoxo
According to recent medical research on humans, more neurons are to be found in the abdominal area, the stomach, which send messages to the brain. This finding reverses the previous assumption that the human brain initiates all of the processes throughout the body. My source is a magazine article, rather than a medical journal, so I do not know how authoritative this new blood-body theory is. Evidently, I have misunderstood the discussion thread question, because almost all of the words in this reply are being underlined in red!
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