The Mortality‑Rooted Emotion Model (MREM): A Unified Theory of Emotion Grounded in Mortality, Cellular Awareness, and Glial‑Orchestrated Cognition

The Mortality‑Rooted Emotion Model (MREM) proposes that death is the fundamental existential constraint shaping emotional architecture, fear is the primary emotional system evolved to detect and respond to death‑risk, and all other emotions are chemically and behaviorally mediated modulations of fear. MREM reframes the emotional spectrum as a set of fear‑regulation states—amplified, suppressed, redirected, internalized, diffuse, or suspended—rather than discrete, independent emotions. Integrating MREM with the Cellular Architect Hypothesis of Consciousness (CAHC) and Glial‑Orchestrated Cognition (GOC) provides a unified biological account in which cellular awareness constitutes the substrate of fear, glial synchronization orchestrates emotional states, and mortality shapes the structure of emotional life. This preprint presents the theoretical foundations, mechanistic model, predictions, and implications of MREM as a biologically grounded theory of emotion.