This chapter aims to provide a perspective of the complex formation of emotion and its operational usage in neuroscience. In the first section, the essence and function of emotion will be introduced from different perspectives. After an overview of historical and ongoing debates in the second section, the neuroscientific findings regarding emotional instances in healthy subjects and psychiatric patients will be outlined throughout the third and fourth sections. In the last section, a comprehensive approach of the newly developing field of computational psychiatry to emotion will be introduced.
Keywords: Affect; Affective bias; Affective reactivity; Emotion; Theory of basic emotions; Theory of constructed emotions.