Emotions

Abstract This chapter focuses on studies of mirror neuron responses while observing emotional expressions, showing that these responses are specific to a certain kind of emotional reaction (such as disgust, fear, or laughter) and selectively involve a number of distinct brain structures (i.e. the insula, amygdale, cingulate cortex). This suggests that observing facial or bodily expressions of a given emotion would trigger a transformation of the sensory representations concerning such expressions into visceromotor representations similar to those that usually result from experiencing that emotion personally. The chapter reveals that the same seems to hold true also for social emotions such as regret.