Finnish research team reveals how emotions are mapped in the body
Researchers Aalto University have revealed how emotions are experienced in the body.
We might feel love in our fingertips –– but did the Ancient Mesopotamians?
Researchers studied ancient texts to see whether humans experience emotions in their bodies in a similar manner, regardless of time, language and culture.
Modern and Mesopotamian people experience love in a rather similar way. In Mesopotamia, love is particularly associated with the liver, heart and knees. All figures: Modern/PNAS: Lauri Nummenmaa et al. 2014, Mesopotamian: Juha Lahnakoski 2024.
From feeling heavy-hearted to having butterflies in your stomach, it seems inherent to the human condition that we feel emotions in our bodies, not just in our brains. But have we always felt –– or at least expressed –– these feelings in the same way?
A multidisciplinary team of researchers studied a large body of texts to find out how people in the ancient Mesopotamian region (within modern day Iraq) experienced emotions in their bodies thousands of years ago, analysing one million words of the ancient Akkadian language from 934-612 BC in the form of cuneiform scripts on clay tablets.
‘Even in ancient Mesopotamia, there was a rough understanding of anatomy, for example the importance of the heart, liver and lungs,’ says Professor Saana Svärd of the University of Helsinki, an Assyriologist who is leading the research project. One of the most intriguing findings relates to where the ancients felt happiness, which was often expressed through words related to feeling ‘open’, ‘shining’ or being ‘full’ –– in the liver.
‘If you compare the ancient Mesopotamian bodily map of happiness with [published by fellow Finnish scientist, Lauri Nummenmaa and colleagues a decade ago], it is largely similar, with the exception of a notable glow in the liver,’ says cognitive neuroscientist Juha Lahnakoski, a visiting researcher at Aalto University.
Other contrasting results between ourselves and the ancients can be seen in emotions such as anger and love. According to previous research, anger is experienced by modern humans in the upper body and hands, while Mesopotamians felt most 'heated', 'enraged' or 'angry' in their feet. Meanwhile, love is experienced quite similarly by modern and Neo-Assyrian man, although in Mesopotamia it is particularly associated with the liver, heart and knees.
‘It remains to be seen whether we can say something in the future about what kind of emotional experiences are typical for humans in general and whether, for example, fear has always been felt in the same parts of the body. Also, we have to keep in mind that texts are texts and emotions are lived and experienced,’ says Svärd. The researchers caution that while it’s fascinating to compare, we should keep this distinction in mind when comparing the modern body maps, which were based on self-reported bodily experience, with body maps of Mesopotamians based on linguistic descriptions alone.
Towards a deeper understanding of emotions
Since literacy was rare in Mesopotamia (3 000-300 BCE), cuneiform writing was mainly produced by scribes and therefore available only to the wealthy. However, cuneiform clay tablets contained a wide variety of texts, such as tax lists, sales documents, prayers, literature and early historical and mathematical texts.
Ancient Near Eastern texts have never been studied in this way, by quantitatively linking emotions to body parts. This can be applied to other language materials in the future. ‘It could be a useful way to explore intercultural differences in the way we experience emotions,’ says Svärd, who hopes the research will provide an interesting contribution to discussion around the universality of emotions.
The results of the research will be published in the on 4 December.
The corpus linguistic method, which makes use of large text sets, has been developed over many years in the Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires (ANEE), led by Svärd. Next, the research team will look at an English corpus, or textual material from the 20th century, which contains 100 million words. Similarly, they also plan to examine Finnish data.
In addition to Svärd and Lahnakoski, the team includes Professor Mikko Sams from Aalto University, Ellie Bennett from the University of Helsinki, Professor Lauri Nummenmaa from the University of Turku and Ulrike Steinert from Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. The project is funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.
Further information:
Juha Lahnakoski
Visiting researcher, Aalto University
Researcher, Forschungszentrum Jülich and LVR-Klinikum Düsseldorf
juha.lahnakoski@aalto.fi
Tel. +49 173 655 4954
Saana Svärd
Professor, University of Helsinki
saana.svard@helsinki.fi
Tel. +358 50 448 2433
Mikko Sams
Professor, Aalto University
mikko.sams@aalto.fi
Tel. +358 50 521 5739
Read more:
Riitta Hari: The exploration of the human brain and mind is captivating
'According to Olli Lounasmaa, ten meters is a distance where half of the information gets lost: the further you are from another researcher, the fewer unexpected conversations arise, and the more refreshing science gossip goes unheard. This is food for thought for remote workers as well.'
Where do we feel love?
New research sheds light on where and how we feel different kinds of love
Read more news
Aalto computer scientists in STOC 2025
Two papers from Aalto Department of Computer Science were accepted to the Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC).
Aalto University again ranked Finland’s top university in the QS World University Rankings
Aalto placed 114th globally
New Academy Research Fellows and Academy Projects
A total of 44 Aalto researchers received Academy Research Fellowship and Academy Project funding from the Research Council of Finland – congratulations to all!