In an attempt to explain emotional consciousness, I developed the EMOCON model shown in figure
5.2, which depicts relations among many of the most important brain areas. The arrows indicate that
activity of neural populations in one area causes neural activity in other connected areas. The figure
shows perceptual information coming from sensory processes on the left, which is then
simultaneously communicated via the thalamus to cortical areas such as the dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex that make cognitive judgments, and to areas involved in bodily perception such as the
amygdala and the insula. Moreover, the thalamus also affects bodily processes such as heart rate via
the hypothalamus, not shown in the figure. If the brain were a serial processor like most computers, it
would have to alternate between processing the sensory inputs cognitively and doing so bodily, but
the power of parallel processing allows it to do both simultaneously.