Neural basis of affect and emotion

Research on affect and emotion has recently been informed by novel methods and theories in cognitive neuroscience. This perspective, known as affective neuroscience, has the potential to dramatically improve our understanding of fundamental processes of emotion. In this article, we review the major neural systems involved in emotion and consider the computational properties of these regions. Specifically, we consider affect systems associated with the representation of predicted and experienced affective states, the cortical re-representation of body states, and the role of reflection in generating and maintaining emotional episodes. (C) 2011 JohnWiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Cogn Sci 2011 2 656-665 DOI: 10.1002/wcs.145