Emotion consists of a very well orchestrated set of alterations in the body that has, as a general purpose, making life more survivable by taking care of a danger, of taking care of an opportunity, either/or, or something in between.

The self is a perpetually recreated neurobiological state.

Rather than being a luxury, emotions are a very intelligent way of driving an organism toward certain outcomes.

There are things in our lives that take up an enormous importance and that become very dominant effects in our biography. And that comes out of a variety of reasons, but fundamentally comes out of how that particular experience connects with your effective systems of response.

We may smile and the dog may wag the tail, but in essence, we have a set program and those programs are similar across individuals in the species.

I believe that it is made out of the same cloth of mind, but it is an add-on, it was something that was specialized to create what we call the self. And it exists for very special purposes and it has very special, and I think by and large good consequences, although not only good consequences.

What happens [in a coma] is that you lose the grounding of the self, you no longer have access to any feeling of your own existence.