Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2012
Primary affects exist at an ecological-communicative level of analysis, and therefore are not identifiable with specific brain regions. The constructionist view favored in the target article, that emotions emerge from “more basic psychological processes,” does not specify the nature of these processes. These more basic processes may actually involve specific neurochemical systems, that is, primary motivational-emotional systems (primes), associated with specific feelings and desires that combine to form the “cocktail” of experienced emotion.
Target article
Prime elements of subjectively experienced feelings and desires: Imaging the emotional cocktail
Related commentaries (1)
The brain basis of emotion: A meta-analytic review