Chapter 1: The Search for Emotion's 'Fingerprints'

• Classical emotion theory —> distinct facial, physiological, neural fingerprints for each emotion… BUT not actually the case!
  • "One must not point to fifty thousand black dogs as proof that all dogs are black."
• Emotional granularity: the ability to distinguish between different feelings (ex., unpleasant vs. disgust (specificity), anxious vs. depressed)
• In reality:
  • Our culture creates expressions, we learn them — the classic faces are stereotypes taught to us
  • Variation is the norm, for facial expressions, bodily responses, and neural signals
• Population thinking: (proposed by Darwin) category is a population of unique members who vary from one another, with no core fingerprint —> how we should think of emotions

Chapter 3:

• Brain has intrinsic activity even without stimulus
• Constantly making and testing predictions (vs sensory input, comparatively less important)

Chapter 4: The Origins of Feeling

• Interoception: sensations of inner motion; what brain senses —> body-budgeting regions (for energy and necessary physiological changes), represent sensations in primary interoceptive cortex
• Together make up feedback loop of interoceptive predictions
• Regions believed to be "reactive" centres for emotions actually body-budgeting regions: predictive!
• Don't just fire when physical motion is needed, but when we think it might (stress, someone of authority is around, even simulation)
• Extremely influenced by people around you— holding hands lowers predicted output, climbing a hill with friends seems easier (and vice versa for losing someone you love)
• Affect = simple feelings of valence (pleasantness) and arousal (energy level); constantly with you akin to brightness and loudness; summaries of our body-budgeting
• Affective niche = the things relevant to body budget (that you notice)
• Affective realism: when our affect colours judgement of reality, usually falsely (ex. hear rustling leaves in forest, think there is a snake, see a snake even though there is none; police mistaking cell phone for gun)
• Must make affect meaningful to execute specific action... enter, emotion

Chapter 5: Concepts, Goals, and Words

• Like how we create meaning out of all senses, create emotions by categorising
• Category = grouping of objects, instances; concept = mental representation (but categories also really mental things so they're kinda the same)
• Emotions =/= reactions to the world, but rather constructions of it (not a stimulus-response system, but prediction and correction)
• Emotion concepts = goal-based, so don't necessarily have perceptual similarity; learn them from other people as we associate instances with words (predictions) , so language affects our ability to "feel" certain emotions
• "Nature provided your brain with the raw materials to wire itself with a conceptual system, with input from a chorus of helpful adults who spoke emotion words to you in a deliberate and intentional way" (103).
• Conceptual combination —> can understand other things, just less efficiently (harder to remember, too)
• Inner-body changes, interoceptive consequences are part of every concept, even if you're not aware of it
• Categorization based on probabilities
• "It takes more than one human brain to create a human mind" (111).

Chapter 6: How the Brain Makes Emotions

• Brain processes information by noticing differences— much more efficient than constantly processing everything we sense
• Concepts = predictions!
• Concept cascade: in one direction, checking a prediction (summary, concept) made of larger neurons with more connections against sensory input (many small neurons); form a concept by going the opposite way
• "Preciseness leads to efficiency; this is a biological payoff of higher emotional granularity" (121) —> easier to categorize things more specifically
• Population thinking! We construct a bunch of predictions, each with a cascade, then control network decides the best one
• Control network and interoceptive networks = core of brain circuitry
• "To make meaning is to go beyond the information given… Emotions are meaning" (126).

Chapter 7: Emotions as Social Reality

• Sound = experience constructed by us, vs. pressure waves = physical phenomenon (same with color vs. wavelengths: all perceiver dependent categories, like flower vs weed)
• Muscle moments, physiological changes become functional in emotion instances only when categorized as such
• "Make something up, give it a name, and you've created a concept. Teach your concept to others, and as long as they agree, you've created something real. How do we work this magic of creation? We categorize. We take things that exist in nature and impose new functions on them that go beyond their physical properties. Then we transmit these concepts to each other, wiring each other's brain for the social world. This is the core of social reality" (134).
• Collective intentionality = shared knowledge of a concept, like money; categorization as a cooperative act.
• Words = shorthand for concepts (which comes first? It's complicated!)
• Arigata-meiwaku (Japanese concept) = when someone has done a favor you didn't want them to, and may have caused difficulty, but you have to be grateful anyway.

Chapter 9: Mastering Your Emotions

• Self is a concept, made up of instances all the identities we carry; common thread = our body

Chapter 10: Emotions and Illness

• Inflammation regulated by "mental" and "physical" things, throws body budget out of wack
• Stress: constructed experience like emotions that affects introperception, etc.
• Pain: nocioception = analogue (or dame thing as?) interoperception, also a constructed experience
• Depression, anxiety also concepts
• Autism may be a lack of ability to make predictions?