“She sat at a table and sipped slowly
her coffee when she felt his eyes caressing her back. She turned around.
Her eyes widened, her heart jumped into her throat and she blushed. ”
Emotions are inborn and stored in the action memory. Her sensation of
his eyes was interpreted by the orientation memory. The interpretation
triggered the initial state of the emotion process in the action memory.
Emotions are stored all over the body. Take blushing, which is handled
by blood vessels in the face. Or the heart which starts pumping faster.
They have no representations in the brain and do not belong to it. Emotions
are embodied.
“Motion” is the root of the word “emotion”. Motion stands for a change
in behavior, or instinctive action originating in action memory. Emotions
control the behavior of animals during courtship, which is practiced also
by insects. The dance of a bee in front of the beehive is an act of emotion.
Swarm intelligence is the collective intelligence of emotions.
She was an actress studying the role of Nora in Ibsen’s play. To prepare
herself she studied emotions of lonely and desperate women, watched their
behavior and tried to act it out. She had experienced a similar challenge
before when studying piano playing.
Initially she had to memorize where the keys were, storing this
information in her orientation memory. Finally when her action memory
took over the playing she became a successful pianist. She new that
in order to convince the audience, Nora has to be enacted by her action
memory.
Years went by. One day, sitting with her family she suddenly remembered
him, his eyes caressing her back and she blushed. What did she remember?
She obviously remembered the cafeteria and him sitting behind her. Yet
the image left out much of the detail. When she was urged to add more
detail:” Tell us more granny!” She unconsciously supplemented it with
information gathered in the neighborhood cafeteria. Memory of him triggered
a process in her action memory which made her blush. Yet this process
was not part of the recollection. It was there from the time of her birth
and triggered whenever she remembered him.
These examples illustrate how we handle information. Memories are not
images which are shipped as such between brain regions. What is shipped
are representations handled in parallel. Abstract concepts
like memory and emotions may now be simulated with cellular automata.
The memory of a complex system
Action memory
Orientation memory
Robot emotions: An applet