Do hormones control our emotions--or is it the other way around?

Many people think that our hormones control our emotions. But actually, it's the other way around-emotions control our hormones through biochemical changes in the brain.

Fear, for instance, is accompanied by the production of one set of brain chemicals that can make us alert and ready to flee, while pleasure triggers the release of other chemicals that soothe and calm.

Here we can learn from the animal kingdom. Stressed-out mother baboons have more problems producing healthy offspring, presumably because sustained production of stress hormones can also damage the hippocampus, which is central to learning and memory. So even though baboons may not commute, do their boss's dry cleaning, or root for the Cubs, they suffer very similarly from the scourge of stress.