An emotion is a physical sensation that alerts the mind that something is happening that is important to the wellbeing of the person. Emotions are one way that our subconsious communicates with our conscious mind. The six basic emotions are happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, anger, and disgust. An emotion is a recipe for action. States, such as feeling good, feeling meh, feeling bad are called affect, these are _not_ emotions. Emotions are predictions about the _cause_ of the sensations/experiences. The brain predicts the cause of the experience by creating a motor plan. That motor plan is sent to both the muscles but also to the sensory neurons to predict what the next sensation will be. If the predictions match then the sensory information never actually makes it to the brain. We can learn to interpret physical sensations differently. Create more categories. [Paper on the 6 basic emotions](https://www.paulekman.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Are-There-Basic-Emotions1.pdf) Emotional flu