Are you hard wired to respond by applauding to something you enjoy?

Answer 1

One way to rephrase this question is as follows: Can an enjoyable stimulus cause involuntary applause? Surprisingly this question links directly to the consideration of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. Does the body have control over its response to emotion? Yes and no. One of the crucial centers for emotion in the brain is the Amygdala (please link this to a definition, I'm not going to go into depth here). The Amygdala exhibits the body's fear response, among other emotional responses. Across the collousseum of human thought (not spatially) is the prefrontal cortex, guiding conscious consideration and critical thought. The prefrontal cortex can 'learn' to inhibit the Amygdala's emotional signals. It seems that based on these two parts of the brain there is no answer to this question, at this level. If the question was "Can there be an involuntary clapping response to hearing enjoyable music?" the answer would be as follows: In general, information regarding external stimuli is transported by sensory neurons located in the skin, eye, ear etc. to interneurons in the spinal chord. From there a stimulus may independently stimulate additional interneurons leading to the brain, and also motor neurons. In the case of a finger pinprick, a signal excites motor neurons in the spinal chord responsible for retracting the finger at the same time as or even before that same signal reaches the parts of your brain responsible for contemplating that action. Thus, you may pull your finger away before you 'realize' it. In fact, this process is even more complicated. It has been shown that neuronal communication it not merely bottom-up (stimulus causes action) or top-down (consideration of stimulus commands action), but a combination of the two. Conscientious intent to resist reaction can have a large impact on the degree of the response (from lessening a flinch to holding a hot pan long enough to get it to the table). This is accomplished by a chemical inhibition of the neurons responsible for the auto-response pathway. This combination of inhibition and stimulus eliminates positive determination of the outcome of a stimulus. Regarding the clapping-applause connection, there are two complications. First, auditory stimuli do not travel the same neuronal path as touch stimuli. Auditory stimuli travel a much more direct path to the brain and may not be linked to motor neurons in the same way that sensory neurons in the skin are. As a result reactions to auditory stimuli may be much more top-down than bottom-up. This would imply that humans are not hard wired but soft wired to clap. Secondly, and perhaps even more damning to the hard wired theory, is the nature of the clapping response itself. Clapping has not been shown to be hard wired in any way. That is, in terms of the nervous system, there is no neuronal 'short cut' to clapping. Clapping is probably an action caused by a stew of inputs from various parts of the conscious brain including, but definitely not limited to, the prefrontal cortex (planning), the amygdala (emotion), and in this case the auditory processing ares of the brain dealing with the initial auditory stimulus itself. This is all top down land. Because of these two issues, the answer to this question is most likely no, you are not hard wired to respond to music you enjoy with applause.