The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions.

-- Donald Calne, author of Within Reason

People whose brains are damaged in their emotional centres are not only unable to express joy or sadness, they are unable to make decisions and they are unable to choose. Because you make decisions based on what you would like, what you fear would happen if you chose to do another thing instead, what you fear would happen if you don't do this particular thing in time, or what you desire the outcome to be. As it says in Lovemarks, which I have been reading since this morning, "emotion and reason are intertwined, but when they are in conflict, emotion wins every time. Without the fleeting and intense stimulus of emotion, rational thought winds down and disintegrates." As much as we'd like to believe we make decisions based on a dispassionate and unswerving adherence to the facts, it's just not true.