But first—understanding the relationship between interoception and emotion requires correcting a basic misconception most of us hold about how feelings come about. The story we’re used to telling goes like this: on the basis of what’s happening to us, the brain determines the appropriate emotion (happy, sad, scared), then directs the body to act accordingly (smile, cry, scream). In fact, the causal arrow points in the opposite direction. The body produces sensations, the body initiates actions—and only then does the mind assemble these pieces of evidence into the entity we call an emotion.
