From the department of "interesting, but not sure in what manner" - The Second Brain: "This second brain is where our "gut instinct" comes from. It's an emotional, feeling brain - an old brain like the one under our relatively new brain (the corpus callosum) which does the logical thinking. We sometimes follow our gut reactions (because the emotions and feelings come first) and only later discover the logical thinking behind our decisions."
Comment: I'm growing in my understaning of the non-cognitive functions of learning. Cognition is a central process to learning, but it's not the sole process. Our emotions, as driving motivators of which concepts to cognitively evaluate, play a substantial role in learning. As brain-based research continues to develop, I'm confident we'll see increased emphasis on emotions/instinct in learning.