What are you feeling? Let a Brain Scan Show You

How or what are you feeling?

With tons of emotions and thoughts bubbling through our brain, some of us probably don't really know. And for those of us who are good at pretending, faking a smile or a frown can hide what we're really feeling inside. Unfortunately, science can see through this disguise. A new study shows that brain scan images can paint a picture (literally) of what an individual is feeling.

According to lead study author Karim Kassam, an assistant professor of social and decision science at Carnegie Mellon University, she recruited 10 method-acting students from the Carnegie Mellon Drama Community at the University of Pittsburg, the majority of which were female.

Nine emotions were used in the study, including anger, disgust, shame, envy, pride, fear, lust, happiness and sadness. Each actor was asked to write a scenario that embodied an emotion, reflecting a unique word for a particular emotion. As this happened, a researcher recorded brain activity via a scanner as the participants looked at words one at a time on a screen. Multiple trials were conducted for each emotion and participant, and images were also shown.

Results showed that approximately 84 percent of the time, the computer was able to correctly guess the emotion displayed on the levels of brain activity. Researchers found four main factors from the study, including the possibilities of participants mixing up positive emotions with negative ones, the role of arousal in separating emotions of anger and sadness, emotions related to social interactions could be more easily separated from others and lust seemed to be completely separate from other emotions compartmentalized in the brain.

"[The study] shows that the difference between the emotions seem to be driven by valence, arousal, and social factors, along with their interesting lust factor," Russell Poldrack, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Austin, Texas, said according to TIME. Poldrack was not a part of the study. "There is nothing new about this, but these results are a nice confirmation, given that they didn't design the study to find those factors but instead fell out of the data."

Researching are hoping that these findings will help reveal more information about mental illness and new ways to treat it. The study was published in Plus ONE.