We argue that emotions play a central role in human cognition. It is therefore of interest to researchers with an aim to create artificial systems with human-level intelligence (or indeed beyond) to consider the functions of emotions in the human cognition whose complexity they aim to recreate. To this end, we review here several functional roles of emotions in human cognition at different levels, for instance in behavioural regulation and reinforcement learning. We discuss some of the neuroscientific and bodily underpinnings of emotions and conclude with a discussion of possible approaches, including existing efforts, to endow artificial systems with mechanisms providing some of the functions of human emotions. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.