Scientists are forgetting about reflex arches. This is the type of emotional responses that lead to things like "crimes of passion."
It is an emotional response without thinking. That is why it is so important for winners of the
@NobelPrize to ensure their research isn't used to dictate how our legal system processes crimes of people in poverty.
Since financial strain causes stress, emotions can bypass the brain completely and it sent right to you muscles, hence the term "I don't know what came over me" when people act out of character.
If your brain is busy processing trauma, your spinal cord takes over. The Cerebral Spinal Fluid is the substance that is the hardest to study while humans are alive and will never be able to be understood... unless we event a special type of detector, but the exposure to high energy beams constantly would cause issues with the findings of the research.
If you mean empathy can be automatic, we agree. But βreflex-likeβ does not mean it bypasses the brain. Affective empathy involves brain networks, even without conscious deliberation.