The function of emotions is to prepare several courses of action or inaction. We are reacting more quickly than does the conscious reasoning. Make us more prepared emergency, but when the choke reasoning can make us more stupid. Communicate our mental states to others. Usually we are aware of a case of emotion, but we are never aware of the transition to an emotion. An emotion, usually, we are aware, and it may affect our intentional actions. However, when the intellect and emotion moves us in one direction to another, we have no way to defuse emotion. Sometimes even we can control our behavior (p. 140). The primary emotions are the biological basis of those complex emotions that seem characteristic of our species. The complex emotions associated with conscious inferences depend on the model we have of ourselves and often, with a comparison between alternatives or between events actually occurring is possible to imagine alternative stories in [...] So integrates a complex emotion emotional signal Elementary and conscious cognitive evaluation (p.130).
1) Emotions are communicative acts between members of the same species. These signals are innate and more or less stereotyped (see the facial expressions of Ekman). They are based more on emotion than on elementary complex also known as social. May be treated as warning signs, threats and subjugation of other social mammals. The interpretation takes place at an unconscious level by the specialized areas of the brain (pp. 124-25).
The brain has a hierarchical structure, and consciousness is like an operating system that exerts control over the modules, but may conflict with them. Some modules can communicate significant propositions or their models. But the communicative theory implies another form of internal communication, and evolutionarily more ancient elements: a small set of mutually exclusive signals that propagate from one module to another. They are simple signals. Such as facial expressions, they do not need to be interpreted, the use of working memory, because their meanings do not depend on the meaning of the parties. They are instinctive and distinctive. Of this type are bodily sensations like hunger or thirst, which depend on monitoring the internal environment. Even the basic emotions are signs like this: they travel from one part of the brain to direct attention, mobilize resources somatic innate, prepare an appropriate sequence of behaviors. The signal starts from a cognitive evaluation, which can produce a message or not conscious, and an important link in the chain is a transition to unconscious emotional signals.
emotional signals help us to coordinate goals and plans in relation to constraints such as time and intellectual resources. Turning points can arise in the implementation of a plan. Are a system of more flexible control of innate reflexes (eg, blink). At the same time are faster than conscious reasoning, because they have no need of working memory.
Typically, we are aware of both the signal is the message. [...] [But] the feeling may be unconscious cognition even if the message comes to conscience. [...] On the other hand, we may be unaware of the cognitive assessment, and feel an emotion, but with no idea of \u200b\u200bthe cause (pp. 126-27).
[...] The idea that there are two distinct channels of communication - the rapid signal the onset of an emotion and a slower cognitive message - was confirmed in the case of one of the primary emotions, fear. Joseph LeDoux, a prominent neuroscientist, has shown that the perceptual information to reach the amygdala, can follow two routes. One way is Quick links directly to the sensory thalamus - an intermediate station perceptual information - the amygdala. It does not pass through the bark, and therefore its signal is a result of gross cognitive analysis. The other way, the slower links the sensory thalamus to the amygdala via the cortex. The path followed by the message on the cognitive assessment. The relative independence of signal and message is confirmed by the clinical observations. (P. 129)
2) Emotions allow us to make decisions without getting lost in a maze of reasoning. The transition to an emotion generates a positive signal - to encourage us to persevere - or negative - To warn of impending danger. These reports instinctive, which Damasio calls somatic markers allow us to respond with an effort to reflect a minimum. (P. 132) That is, enter the ideoaffettiva assessment of an event, or better a fast categorization of experience on the basis of past emotional memory.
3) Often our actions move us [directly] to the action. But reasoning is still possible, and sometimes the reasoning is in conflict with the emotion. We conclude that action would be immoral or unwise. The solution of the conflict is an open solution: we can not predict. Behavior there is an element irreducible indeterminism. The strong feelings that arise in certain conditions are [often] inappropriate (p. 133). The central role of the orbital prefrontal cortex and to resolve such conflicts - whether between the cognitive modules between themselves and the cognitive and emotional - seems to be increasingly recognized.
From "Thinking and reasoning" (2008).
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