Who Needs Emotions? The Brain Meets the Robot

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What Are Emotions, Why Do We
Have Emotions, and What Is Their
Computational Basis in the Brain?
edmund t. rolls
Emotions may be defined as states elicited by reinforcers (rewards and
punishers). This approach helps with understanding the functions of
emotion, and with classifying different emotions; and in understanding
what information processing systems in the brain are involved in emotion,
and how they are involved. The hypothesis is developed that brains
are designed around reward and punishment evaluation systems, because
this is the way genes can build a complex system that will produce
appropriate but flexible behavior to increase their fitness. By specifying
goals rather than particular behavioral patterns of responses, genes are
open to a much wider range of behavioral strategies, including strategies
that increase their fitness.
The primate brain represents the identity of a primary (unlearned)
reinforcer first (e.g., for taste in the primary taste cortex) before it decodes
the reward or punishment value of the innate reinforcers (in the
orbitofrontal cortex, which includes the secondary taste cortex, and the
amygdala). Brain regions that represent the identity of objects independently
of their reward or punishment value (in the case of vision, the
inferior temporal visual cortex) project into the orbitofrontal cortex and
amygdala, where neurons learn associations between previously neutral
(e.g., visual) stimuli and primary reinforcers (such as taste). This
process of stimulus-reinforcement association learning can be very rapid