The Experience of Emotion

Experiences of emotion are content-rich events that emerge at the level of psychological description, but must be causally constituted by neurobiological processes. This chapter outlines an emerging scientific agenda for understanding what these experiences feel like and how they arise. We review the available answers to what is felt (i.e., the content that makes up an experience of emotion) and how neurobiological processes instantiate these properties of experience. These answers are then integrated into a broad framework that describes, in psychological terms, how the experience of emotion emerges from more basic processes. We then discuss the role of such experiences in the economy of the mind and…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Award: 0527440
• NI
  National Institutes of Health

  Awards: MH58147, R01 MH58147
• NI
  National Institute of Mental Health

  Awards: K02 MH001981, R01 MH58147, MH58147