How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

by Lisa Feldman Barrett

Emotions are real, but not in the objective sense that molecules or neurons are real. They are real in the same sense that money is real—that is, hardly an illusion, but a product of human agreement.

and a flushing face. An emotion is your brain’s creation of what your bodily sensations mean, in relation to what is going on around you in the world.

The idea of an emotional brain region is an illusion caused by the outdated belief in a reactive brain.

la idea de una region cerebral de las.emociones es una ilusión causada por un creencia desactualizada en un cerbro reactivo"

specific way, but it prompts your

Affect leads us to believe that objects and people in the world are inherently negative or positive.

Affect is your brain’s best guess about the state of your body budget. Interoception is also one of the most important ingredients in what you experience as reality.

Babies become wired for their native languages by statistical learning.21

Babies use statistical learning to make predictions about the world, guiding their actions.

Humans are not the only animals that learn statistically: non-human primates, dogs,

They also quickly learn that some of the information they need about the world resides in the minds of the people around them.24

Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world.