First on the Scene - the Non-Frontal Lobes

As you stand in front of the grocery store shelf you are confronted with a dizzying variety of sensory inputs - sights, sounds, smells, touch. The first thing your brain has to do is assemble this jumble into a perceived scene. This function is performed in various locations in the non-frontal lobes - in the occipital lobe for visual input, the temporal lobes for auditory input, the parietal lobe for physical sensations, and so on.

These processes, called "perceptual binding", all happen extremely quickly, between 50 and 200 thousandths of a second (milliseconds) after sensory input is registered.

Next comes pre-conscious recognition and categorization.  Now that the scene is assembled, your brain determines what exactly you are looking at (and/or hearing, smelling, touching). These processes launch the first invocation of memory - representational objects in your long-term memory that match the assembled stimulus are activated, and those objects in turn launch a cascade of additional activations based on associations unique to your brain that you have developed over a lifetime. So now you know you are inside something you call a grocery store, standing in front of something you know as a shelf, looking at rows of distinct objects called bottles that contain a liquid called salad dressing that you know you pour on greenery and serve from a bowl at dinner, etc., etc.

Although for the sake of simplification we have presented this as a purely cognitive and perceptual process, emotional elements are becoming activated very early on as well. Each memory object activated by the scene is associated with a basic emotional "tag" that references how you feel about it, and how intensely you hold that feeling. So, for example, the simple fact of recognizing that you are in a grocery store will begin to activate emotional connections - positive if you like shopping for groceries, negative if you do not.

Which brings us to the next step in the pre-conscious process, approach or avoid?