The idea proposed here is that conscious feelings result when global organismic states are represented in the cognitive workspace. The basic ingredients of the global

organismic state would include information about the stimulus and other aspects of the social and physical environment, the survival circuit the stimulus activates, CNS arousal initiated by the survival circuit, feedback from survival responses that are expressed in the body, and long-term memories (episodic and semantic) about the stimulus and about the resulting state (Figure 4). Thus, in the presence of a survival circuit trigger (a.k.a. an emotional stimulus), the various ingredients would be integrated, and the resulting state categorized by matching the state with screening assay long-term memory stores. When this occurs, a conscious feeling of the global organismic state begins to exist. Such a state, having been categorized on the basis of memories of similar states, could be dimensional in nature (just based on arousal

and valence) or could take on specific qualities (could be more like what one felt when previously in danger than when frustrated or when enjoying a tasty meal). Labeling of the state with emotion words Vemurafenib adds additional specificity to the experience, creating specific feelings (fear, pleasure, disgust, etc). Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a key component of the cognitive workspace, Isotretinoin is lacking in most other mammals, and is less developed in nonhuman primates than in humans (Reep, 1984, Braak, 1980, Preuss, 1995 and Wise, 2008). In humans, granular prefrontal cortex also has unique cellular features (Semendeferi et al., 2011). Given that feelings are a category of conscious experience, the usual mechanisms of conscious experience should be at work when we have emotional experiences (LeDoux, 1996, LeDoux, 2002 and LeDoux, 2008). And given that some of the neural mechanisms involved

in conscious representations may be different in humans and other animals, we should be cautious in assuming that the subjectively experienced phenomena that humans label as feelings are experienced by other animals when they engage in behaviors that have some similarity to human emotional behavior. In short, if the circuits that give rise to conscious representations are different in two species, we cannot use behavioral similarity to argue for similarity of conscious feelings functionally. These observations add neurobiological substance to the point famously argued by the philosopher Thomas Nagel. He proposed that only a bat can experience the world like a bat, and only a human can experience the world like a human (Nagel, 1974). We should resist the inclination to apply our introspections to other species.