Because metaphors are processed automatically, without conscious appraisal, they can be used to rapidly communicate, or manipulate.
However, human data on the relation between testosterone, fear, and anxiety have predominantly involved questionnaires that index cortically executed conscious appraisal of anxious mood.
The rapid subcortical route has adaptive survival value because it permits a reflexive response to occur prior to a more thorough conscious appraisal of the threat stimulus.
At the second-level however, there is a conscious appraisal of these processes: Information from first-level physiological, expressive and experiential reactions is integrated with the behavioural context.
A secondary route engages unimodal and multimodal association cortices as well as subcortical hippocampal-amygdalar networks and is thought to be responsible for slower conscious appraisal of stimuli and the initiation of behavioural responses.
Most models ascribe to the amygdala a primary, phenomenological, level within the hierarchy of emotional processing, and amygdala responses can be evoked without the need for conscious appraisal [48] [49].
Whereas the posterior cingulate seems to provide, early on following error commission, a generic (i.e. weak differentiation between hits vs. unaware errors) action monitoring system [40], [55], the left insula and right OFC may provide critical additional internal monitoring signals to the individual, enabling a rapid conscious appraisal of response errors [7].
In addition to this automatic pathway, a controlled pathway exists: the focal attention to the sexually relevant stimulus induces conscious appraisal of these stimulus aspects.
SRM is an objective measure that requires no conscious appraisal or language-related responses and is independent of cognitive processing and arousal.
Thus, whereas exposure to the erotic stimulus immediately elicited genital responses, the genital pain instruction might have biased the conscious appraisal of the erotic film fragment, such that further genital responding was impaired.
This discrepancy between "reflective" and "reflexive" affective associations with sexual stimuli in women with dyspareunia points to the relevance of conscious appraisal and deliberate rather than automatic processes in the onset and maintenance of dyspareunia.
