Self Comes to Mind

are complemented by a cognitive program that includes certain ideas and modes of cognition, but the world of emotions is largely one of actions carried out in our bodies, from facial expressions and postures to changes in viscera and internal milieu.
    Feelings of emotion, on the other hand, are composite perceptions of what happens in our body and mind when we are emoting. As far as the body is concerned, feelings are images of actions rather than actions themselves; the world of feelings is one of perceptions executed in brain maps. But there is a qualification to be made here: the perceptions we call feelings of emotion contain a special ingredient that corresponds to the primordial feelings discussed earlier. Those feelings are based on the unique relationship between body and brain that privileges interoception . There are other aspects of the body being represented in emotional feelings, of course, but interoception dominates the process and is responsible for what we designate as the felt aspect of these perceptions.
    The general distinction between emotion and feeling, then, is reasonably clear. While emotions are actions accompanied by ideas and certain modes of thinking, emotional feelings are mostly perceptions of what our bodies do during the emoting, along with perceptions of our state of mind during that same period of time. In simple organisms capable of behavior but without a mind process, emotions can be alive and well, but states of emotional feeling may not necessarily follow.
    Emotions work when images processed in the brain call into action a number of emotion-triggering regions, for example, the amygdala or special regions of the frontal lobe cortex. Once any of these trigger regions is activated, certain consequences ensue—chemical molecules are secreted by endocrine glands and by subcortical nuclei and delivered to both the brain and the body (e.g., cortisol in the case of fear), certain actions are taken (e.g., fleeing or freezing; contraction of the gut, again in the case of fear), and certain expressions are assumed (e.g., a face and posture of terror). Importantly, in humans at least, certain ideas and plans also come to mind. For example, a negative emotion such as sadness leads to the recall of ideas about negative facts; a positive emotion does the opposite; the plans of action pictured in our minds are also in keeping with the overall signal of the emotion. Certain styles of mental processing are promptly instituted as an emotion develops. Sadness slows down thinking and may lead one to dwell on the situation that prompted it; joy may accelerate thinking and reduce attention to unrelated events. The aggregate of all these responses constitutes an “emotional state” unfolding in time, fairly rapidly, and then subsiding until new stimuli capable of causing emotions are introduced into the mind and begin yet another emotional chain reaction.
    Feelings of emotion constitute the next step, following rapidly on the heels of emotion, the legitimate, consequential, ultimate achievement of the emotional process: the composite perception of all that has gone on during emotion—the actions, the ideas, the style with which ideas flow—fast or slow, stuck on an image, or rapidly trading one for another.
    Seen from a neural perspective, the emotion-feeling cycle begins in the brain, with the perception and appraisal of a stimulus potentially capable of causing an emotion and the subsequent triggering of an emotion. The process then spreads elsewhere in the brain and in the body proper, building up the emotional state. In closing, the process returns to the brain for the feeling part of the cycle, although the return involves brain regions different from those in which it all started.
    Emotion programs incorporate all the components of the life-regulation machinery that came along in the history of evolution, like the sensing and detection of conditions, the measurement of degrees of internal need, the incentive process with its reward and punishment aspects, the prediction devices. Drives and motivations are simpler constituents of emotion. This is why one’s happiness or sadness alters the state of one’s drives and motivations, immediately changing one’s mix of appetites and desires.
Triggering and Executing Emotions
     
    How are emotions triggered? Quite simply, by images of objects or events that are actually happening at the moment or that, having happened in the past, are now being