Meh... this is a poor interpretation. Subjective emotion is a response to prediction on the nociceptive inputs we get. So we get the input of the unseen happy

Meh... this is a poor interpretation. Subjective emotion is a response to prediction on the nociceptive inputs we get. So we get the input of the unseen happy thing, and our brain tries to make a prediction of WHY that thing is happy, then if it guesses right we feel happiness and if it guesses wrong, we feel unhappiness. Roughly. There are a lot of good studies on this, they're all pretty technical, but seem very well done. I can't find with a quick Googling the one I came across (in the context of researching VR and potential consequences of 'virtual embodiment') a few days ago, but this is in a similar vein (though more focused on pain than on general emotion): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4529956/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4529956/