Emotions

Simply mentioning words such as "wheeze" can activate the brains of asthma patients, researchers have discovered, shedding light on the emotional underpinnings of the disease. The study of six patients found that asthma patients have extra brain activity in an area called the anterior cingulate cortex, which is associated with emotional responses.

Forget sex, politics, religion. The woman who has had an abortion enters an alien land where none of the above compute. It is a land of buried emotion, where intellect and education are irrelevant, where other people's judgments of you are never as harsh as your own. Some women know they must grieve for what they lost. Others wrongly imagine that because it was their choice to abort, they don't need to pause to explore buried pain.

Part electronic art project and part social science experiment, the website We Feel Fine (wefeelfine.org) harvests human feelings from inside the matrix -- Keanu notwithstanding -- collecting sentences that contain "I feel" or "I am feeling" from a number of popular blogs, including My Space, LiveJournal, Flickr and Google.

Since before the Gulf War began, the armed services have been planning ways to help soldiers and families with the strains and pressures of their homecoming. Among potential problems: * Returning troops may have FANTASY EXPECTATIONS of what they'll find when they're finally reunited. * Wives who are MORE INDEPENDENT after handling things alone for months may be reluctant to give up the freedom.

Scientific research, above all, is supposed to be practical. That's one reason certain members of Congress are refusing to fund a modest NASA satellite called Triana that would fix a steady gaze on Earth from space--giving the folks back home an opportunity for real-time, round-the-clock navel gazing. Unlike other satellites that take patchwork snapshots, Triana would beam back a live image of the whole planet, 24 hours a day.

Doctors treating cancer patients should try harder to help them deal with the emotional toll the disease exacts, a panel convened by the Institute of Medicine said last week. The panel's experts recommended that cancer care providers systematically screen patients for emotional distress and other mental problems and connect them with people who can help.

Some people, psychologists observe, get overly emotional even in reacting to mundane events. Others, however, remain unperturbed even under the most trying of circumstances. These levels of feeling characterize a person's emotional life. People who live with deep emotional intensity seem to have a more complex sense of themselves and lead lives that are more complicated than do those whose emotions are less strong. People who have the deepest lows also have the loftiest highs.

Re "Natural, Ethereal at Every Turn," [Nov. 22] about the collection of hand-turned wood bowls owned by Ann Ehringer: I have long believed that one is or is not born a collector, not unlike golfers, sailors and fishermen. I am not a collector per se, but I do count about a half-dozen calabash bowls and other treen objects acquired over the years among my most prized possessions.

Finally, it was over. After all the suspicions, the investigations, the court proceedings, it was over. Six years. Time enough for careers to be made, fortunes earned, reputations ruined and reputations restored. And so it was for all those intertwined in the judicial saga that began in August, 1983, and became known as McMartin.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Show Your Bones" (Interscope) * * * 1/2 Karen O doesn't need your kicks. She's in search of something more -- a wailing, shrieking, panting, purring romantic as likely to slow down for a bit of raw emotional truth as explode right off the stage.