How a Brain-Body Network Detects Its Own Emotional State Changes

An emotional episode is accompanied by changes distributed across the brain and body, yet no single measurement is the emotion and no separate inner observer is available to read those measurements. This paper asks a mechanistic question: how can a distributed brain-body system detect a transition in its own condition and use that transition in feeling, regulation, choice, and action? The proposal is developed from the 2011-2026 genealogy of Self-Aware Networks (SAN). Early Neo Mind Cycle records described a senses-brainwaves-action loop and an external neurofeedback mirror in which selected electroencephalographic changes were transformed into light and sound, returned through the senses, related to thoughts and feelings, and used for learned self-discrimination. Owner-dated 2012 notes then made emotion prediction-based, connected dynamic electrical expectation to brain-body-sense feedback, distinguished the physical form of a stimulus from its learned meaning, and described distributed observation without a singular observer. Its conclusions are limited to the assumptions, evidence, and testing conditions stated in the manuscript. It belongs to the Self-Aware Networks neuroscience and consciousness research program. This is a corrected preprint edition released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.