Figure 5.2 shows how bodily perceptions can contribute to cognitive appraisal and assessment of
value through the interactions of the amygdala and the insula with cortical areas. Hence the parallel
constraint satisfaction that assesses the relevance of situations to goals includes bodily perception as
an important part. Emotions are not just gut reactions, because they also involve cognitive judgments.
But contrary to purely cognitive theories of emotions, gut reactions are a part of appraisal. This
combination would be very puzzling if you tried to think of the brain as operating in a series of steps,
and had to decide what it does first: cognitive appraisal or bodily perception? But the kinds of
dynamic interactions depicted in figure 5.2 show how emotion can be both representational and
embodied.