UC Berkeley

Emotion is defined as a property of intentional behavior. The widespread practice of separating emotion from reason is traced to an ancient distinction between passive perception, which is driven by sensory information from the environment, and active perception, which begins with dynamics in the brain that moves the body into the environment in search of stimuli.  The neurodynamics of intentional behavior is reviewed, with emphasis on the limbic system that controls the autonomic and neuroendocrine systems in the brain and body, directing them for the support of the musculoskeletal system that is executing the behavior. An essential part of intentionality is learning from the sensory consequences of one's own actions.  The perception of emotional states through awareness involves global states of cooperative activity in the forebrain, which have internal contributions from the many parts of the brain that join in making these states, and inevitably there are contributions from the sensory systems of the body that implement and signal emotional states.  The distinction between "rational" versus "emotional" behaviors is made in terms of the constraint of high-intensity chaotic activity of components of the forebrain by the cooperative dynamics of consciousness versus the escape of subsystems owing to an excess of chaotic fluctuations in states of strong arousal.