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Abstract:
Embodiment is crucially important in our understanding of the mind. The human body, as modeled in the brain, provides an essential frame of reference for the neural processes that we experience as the mind. We use the physical state of our very living being as the ground reference for the mental constructions which we make about the environment we live in. The human body and the brain establish an inseparable association that creates our consciousness. Everything we do and feel, is evolved from the structural and functional aggregate of these two, rather than from brain alone. Thus, the background state of our body landscape provides a rather neutral mood, against which we can judge any changes shaken by emotions. When the brain consciously appraises emotional changes in that equilibrium, we are having an emotional response--a feeling. Pretty much like being aware of the goose bumps while listening an effective piece of music. Conscious feeling of these goose bumps creates in one’s brain a memorized history of one’s body state under the given situation. Feeling depends on the juxtaposition of an image of the body, correlated to an image of something else; such as the auditory image of a piece of music.