Key Takeaway:
The brain is more nuanced than most emotional surveys give it credit for, as it can experience opposing emotions at the same time. Traditional neuroscience has framed emotions as binary signals, but human experience suggests otherwise. People report feelings like nostalgia as a strange fusion of delight and sorrow, even gross-out comedy. Brain imaging shows that in the deeper, evolutionarily older parts of the brain, positive and negative emotions don’t cohabitate, but in more advanced cortical regions, such as the anterior cingulate and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, they show stable, distinct activation during moments of mixed emotion.
Picture this: you’re watching your child wave goodbye from their new college dorm, a nervous smile on their face, your heart tight with pride—and loss. You’re excited for them, but gutted inside. It’s a cocktail of emotions that doesn’t fit neatly into “good” or “bad.” And yet, psychology still tends to ask us to pick just one.
For decades, researchers have measured emotion using single-axis scales: 1 for miserable, 9 for euphoric. But if you’ve ever felt nostalgia, awe, or that gut-wrenching joy-sorrow blend during a farewell, you know real feelings don’t play by neat rules. So, can the brain actually experience opposing emotions at once—or are we just mentally toggling back and forth?
As it turns out, your brain is more nuanced than most emotional surveys give it credit for.
The Myth of Emotional Either-Or
Traditional neuroscience has framed emotions as biological signals pushing us to act—run from danger, hug a loved one, say yes to opportunity. They’re seen as binary: approach or avoid, good or bad. Under this model, simultaneous opposites shouldn’t exist. If fear floods your system, how can joy squeeze in?
But human experience says otherwise. And science is beginning to catch up.
Across cultures, people report feelings like nostalgia as a strange fusion of delight and sorrow. Even gross-out comedy can elicit that same emotional mashup—disgust and amusement punching in at the same time. Some researchers have even tracked this physiologically. In one study, volunteers showed unique body responses—changes in skin conductance and heart rate—when exposed to something both revolting and funny.
Still, brain imaging told a different story. When researchers scanned people watching disgusting humour, their brains lit up as if they were just… disgusted. No unique “mixed emotion” signature. But here’s the catch: these studies often average out brain data over time and across people. And if mixed emotions are temporal cocktails—moments where two streams of feeling overlap briefly—then averaging might flatten them into a single flavour.
Into the Emotional Grey Zone
To test that, neuroscientist Jonas Kaplan and colleagues designed an elegant experiment. Participants were shown One Small Step, a bittersweet animated film about a girl’s dream of becoming an astronaut—and the father who supports her. Spoiler: it doesn’t end with hugs and high-fives.
Inside the MRI machine, viewers watched the film while researchers tracked their brain activity. Later, they rewatched it and pinpointed the exact moments they felt positive, negative, or both.
Here’s where it gets fascinating: in the deeper, evolutionarily older parts of the brain like the amygdala (your internal emotional alarm bell), positive and negative emotions didn’t cohabitate. They seemed to take turns. But in the more advanced cortical regions—like the anterior cingulate (which handles conflict) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (linked to self-awareness and long-term decision-making)—something else happened. These regions showed stable, distinct activation during moments of mixed emotion.
In other words, your higher-order brain functions are capable of holding both joy and sorrow at the same time.
Grown Brains, Grown Feelings
This finding fits well with developmental research. Children don’t start recognising or describing mixed emotions until later in life. That’s likely because the brain regions responsible for juggling complexity—like the prefrontal cortex—aren’t fully developed yet. As we mature, we gain the neurological hardware to embrace emotional contradictions.
And those contradictions are everywhere. The end of a relationship. A farewell party before a big move. Even joyful success, tinged with guilt or fear. Mixed emotions are often the price of growth and change—and how we hold them may shape whether those moments become cherished memories or lasting wounds.
The more we understand how the brain handles emotional duality, the better we can learn to sit with it—and maybe even grow from it.
Because sometimes, feeling everything at once is exactly what makes us human.
