Photo: flickr
Neuroscientists are starting to be able to detect emotions with greater accuracy. It seems that negative emotions are some form of neural signature, which can be detected looking at brain scans. In fact, even a computer can identify and label the different brain activity. This implies that we can tell how a person is feeling just by looking at their brain scans!
Such finding is a great stepping stone for future research. With enough trials and studies, we can create a brain scan that shows the "average" neural activity normal for a certain negative emotion. Then taking this information, psychologists or doctors can determine whether or not someone is experiencing an abnormal amount of a certain emotion response, which then can help in identifying disorders or issues with healthy functioning.
There are some skepticism involved in using brain scans to identify one's emotions, but Dr. Chang, who led the study, explains that the team had conducted so many trials that they were able to accurately detect a new participant's emotions simply based on the brain scans taken and generalized from previous trials!
Source material from PsyBlog