ArticleLiterature Review

Emotion, Decision Making and the Orbitofrontal Cortex

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Abstract

The somatic marker hypothesis provides a systems-level neuroanatomical and cognitive framework for decision making and the influence on it by emotion. The key idea of this hypothesis is that decision making is a process that is influenced by marker signals that arise in bioregulatory processes, including those that express themselves in emotions and feelings. This influence can occur at multiple levels of operation, some of which occur consciously and some of which occur non-consciously. Here we review studies that confirm various predictions from the hypothesis. The orbitofrontal cortex represents one critical structure in a neural system subserving decision making. Decision making is not mediated by the orbitofrontal cortex alone, but arises from large-scale systems that include other cortical and subcortical components. Such structures include the amygdala, the somatosensory/insular cortices and the peripheral nervous system. Here we focus only on the role of the orbitofrontal cortex in decision making and emotional processing, and the relationship between emotion, decision making and other cognitive functions of the frontal lobe, namely working memory.

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... To further discuss this point, two experiences of the human are described as amenity and efficiency (Lee et al., 2017). Amenity is an emotional reaction to emotional background, requiring an involuntary withdrawal of implicit memories, whereas efficiency is an attitude toward certain actions in goal-oriented attention, voluntarily withdrawing of explicit memories (Bechara et al., 2000). From a psychological standpoint, perception is evaluated through the unconscious and conscious with tacit knowledge. ...
Article
This study explores the profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on soul surfers, individuals for whom surfing transcends mere sport to embody a spiritual, psychological, and physical communion with the sea and ocean. The pandemic’s restrictions, which limited access to the sea, challenged the core of soul surfing practices, prompting surfers to seek alternative means to sustain their connection with the sea and ocean. Through qualitative research, employing phenomenological analysis, theories of affordance, symbolic interactionism, and interpretive interviews, the study examines the transition from a natural exterior to a built interior, adapting their living spaces to maintain their surfing identity, rituals, practices, and the re-creation of their sacred space that was once the sea and ocean. The study also examines the philosophical implications of identifying as a surfer when physical engagement with the sea is obstructed, highlighting the enduring nature of the soul surfer’s identity beyond the physical act of surfing. The findings reveal a shift towards an inward spiritual and psychological practice, where meditation, mindfulness, and physical training within the confines of their homes served as a bridge to the oceanic experience and a renewed sense of their interior affordances. This adaptation underscores the resilience and creativity of soul surfers in preserving their deeply rooted bond with the sea despite external disruptions. Conclusively, the study offers insights into the dynamic relationship between soul surfers and their sacred spaces, illustrating how the pandemic has reshaped their practices and, by extension, their identities.
... Emotions: Scientific studies invoke a key role for emotions in influencing decision making (Janis & Mann, 1977;Bechara et al., 2000) and behavioral tendencies (Brockner & Higgins, 2001). Within the realm of technology usage, studies argue that emotional influences are the greatest in the early learning stages of innovations, such as the current state of generative AI technologies (Wood & Moreau, 2006). ...
... Furthermore, patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) were unable to learn from previous mistakes, repeatedly made decisions that led to negative consequences, and were unable to properly respond to emotions. It followed that patients with impaired vmPFC were unable to use emotion to help them make decisions [73]. This evidence seemed to be correlated to the positive emotion group producing better decision-making task performance. ...
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Decision-making is a complex cognitive process, in which emotion is one of the most important factors. But insights into the influence of emotion on decision-making are scarce, especially the underlying mechanism of the brain. To reveal the brain’s underlying mechanisms of the influence of emotion on decision-making, an experiment involving emotion elicitation and decision-making tasks was designed. Electroencephalography (EEG), behavioral, and subjective data were collected and conducted. We constructed time-varying weighted directed networks by phase slope index (PSI) in four frequency bands and calculated graph theory metrics. Firstly, the period that the brain processes information most efficiently is 100–300 ms after the appearance of the decision-making task. Secondly, by analyzing the temporal-spatial domains of EEG, the significant differences in global efficiency (GE) and local efficiency (LE) were found among three different emotion groups in the alpha band in the low-difficulty task during 100–300 ms. Thirdly, most activation regions of different emotions were similar and concentrated in the parietal, and occipital lobes but there were still slight differences that were more likely to be found in the prefrontal and left temporal lobes. Graph theory metrics in the decision-making process changed dynamically in the temporal domain and graph theory metrics of different emotions were different.
... Emotion is a facilitator of plasticity, except in extreme cases such as fearful memories that can be suppressed from consciousness. Unless intense arousal is involved, emotional arousal appears to promote synaptic plasticity in memory, promoting learning (Bechara et al. 2000; see Cahill et al. 1995). ...
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Moses’s great command, known to us as the Shema, taught the Jewish people that the great goal of one’s entire being must be love of God but that this outcome can be easily obscured in the face of distractions and competing pleasures. The task he describes may be understood as an exhortation to live and teach moral virtues, informed by faith in God: self-management of impulses and conditionings so that we can think clearly about the goals we pursue and love wisely. This study offers an analysis of the Shema through the lens of neurobiology. This approach supports a literal interpretation of the Shema to the extent that it provides a neurobiological explanation for the role of memory, positive emotion, and curated attention in establishing positive convictions and holding to them in the face of contrary stimuli. In doing so, it demonstrates that such applications of neurobiology can enrich our understanding of human behaviour because they offer insights into the internal dynamics at work in human choices and motivations, and into the need for coherence between our emotional responses and our convictions.
... Patients with brain lesions in the vmPFC showed deficits in this test. Although with repeated testing normal individuals tended to improve their performance, patients with vmPFC lesions could not do so and insisted on making risky decisions (56). ...
Chapter
Understanding the organization of the human mind has been a long-standing endeavor of scientists. In this framework, the dual origin hypothesis proposes that the cerebral cortex of higher mammals originates from two primordial structures, the piriform cortex and the hippocampus. While the piriform cortex gives rise to olfactocentric division, a.k.a. the ventral trend, the hippocampus gives rise to hippocampocentric division, a.k.a. the dorsal trend. Cortical areas arising from the ventral trend include ventral parts of the frontal, parietal, and occipital lobes, the insula, and most of the temporal lobe. Those from the dorsal trend include the medial and dorsolateral parts of the frontal, parietal, and occipital lobes, the hippocampal formation, and the parahippocampal gyrus. These two trends overlap in the anterior cingulate cortex, prefrontal cortex, and temporo-parietal junction. All these spatially distributed brain regions cooperate with each other to form a set of networks, today called intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs). The correlative or anti-correlative interactions of ICNs give rise to human mental functions, which can be subdivided into two according to dual origin hypothesis as the general cognitive domains of the dorsal trend, the “cold brain” and the emotional and comportmental functions of the ventral trend, the “hot brain.” The default mode network as the seat of the “self” seems to be the major orchestrator of these dual streams of the cold and hot brain.
... According to the World Health Organization, 158 million children and adolescents in the world presented with obesity in 2020, and it is predicted that this figure will increase to 253 million by 2030. 1 Childhood obesity is associated with persistent obesity in adulthood and a high risk of chronic non-communicable diseases, premature including the maturation of the dopaminergic pathways and the regulation of inhibitory and excitatory signaling, resulting in increased reward sensitivity and reduced behavioral control. [4][5][6][7] The last growth spurt that takes place during adolescence requires more energy to deposit new tissue, and therefore an increase in appetite is observed. ...
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The neuroplasticity of adolescents could make them responsive to interventions affecting brain maturation such as yoga and mindfulness. We aimed to determine their efficacy and safety for the management of children and adolescents with obesity. A systematic search using MEDLINE, EMBASE, and PsycInfo was performed up to March 2024. We considered randomized controlled trials (RCTs) using yoga or mindfulness alone (or combined with standard therapy) compared to placebo, nothing, or standard therapy for weight loss. Methodological quality of studies was assessed with the Risk of Bias 2 tool. The primary outcomes were changes in weight and adiposity (kg, body mass index [BMI], BMI z‐score, fat mass, waist circumference, waist‐to‐hip ratio). We assessed 4 yoga and 7 mindfulness RCTs, including 620 participants 8–19 years old. The number of participants varied per type of intervention (yoga, n = 10–63; mindfulness, n = 11–47). Comparators were no‐intervention or active controls. All yoga trials reported anthropometric improvements, but all trials combined yoga with extra physical activity. Five out of seven mindfulness trials reported anthropometric improvements. The methodological quality of the RCTs was low. No safety information was reported. The effect of yoga and mindfulness on psychological and metabolic variables was inconsistent. This evidence is insufficient to recommend yoga or mindfulness for the management of adolescents with obesity.
... The authors suggested that the DLPFC may be primarily involved in decisions under risk whereas the OFC is associated to ambiguity. This supports the possible involvement of the DLPFC in cognitive control and in abilities encompassing cold EFs (since risky DM requires a careful balance between potential results and the probabilities of occurrence of each possible outcome) and the OFC in more emotional contexts and abilities encompassing hot EFs (as ambiguous DM includes a factor of uncertainty; Bechara et al., 2000;Fellows and Farah, 2007;Pessoa, 2009;Chase and Clark, 2010;Nejati et al., 2018). In this way, the involvement of cold and hot cognition (and in particular of EFs; For more details: see the Introduction section) can be supported by these results, confirming the interaction between the two systems throughout the DM process. ...
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Introduction Among the tasks employed to investigate decisional processes, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) appears to be the most effective since it allows for deepening the progressive learning process based on feedback on previous choices. Recently, the study of decision making through the IGT has been combined with the application of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to understand the cognitive mechanisms and the neural structures involved. However, to date no review regarding the effects of tDCS on decisional processes assessed through the IGT is available. This scoping review aims to provide a comprehensive exploration of the potential effects of tDCS in enhancing decisional processes, assessed with the IGT, through the evaluation of the complete range of target cases. Methods The existing literature was analyzed through the PRISMA approach. Results Results reported that tDCS can enhance performance in the IGT and highlighted a pivotal role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the orbitofrontal cortex in risky and ambiguous decisions. Discussion Thus, tDCS over the brain regions identified improves the decisional processes in healthy subjects and patients, confirming its potential to enhance decision making in everyday contexts and deepen the neural correlates. Suggestions for further studies are provided to delve into decisional mechanisms and how to better support them.
... For instance, patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) often exhibit impaired judgment and difficulty in making advantageous decisions, as shown in the Iowa Gambling Task. These patients tend to select immediate rewards despite long-term negative consequences, demonstrating the crucial role of the vmPFC in evaluating future outcomes and guiding goal-directed behavior [4]. Moreover, studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have revealed that individuals with dysfunction in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) struggle with planning and adjusting behavior based on changing rules, further highlighting the prefrontal cortex's involvement in executive control and flexible decision-making [5] . ...
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The human brain is a highly complex organ responsible for a wide range of essential functions, from cognitive processing to the regulation of physiological activities. This paper provides an overview of the brains unique capabilities, including higher cognitive functions, consciousness, and memory formation. Using neuroimaging and neurological studies, the essay explores how specific brain regions contribute to decision-making, self-awareness, and learning. Furthermore, a comparison between the brain and other organs highlights its role in behavior regulation and goal-oriented actions. The paper also discusses the evolutionary advantages conferred by the brains adaptability, intelligence, and creativity. Through a comprehensive review of existing literature, this study concludes that the brains unmatched abilities are fundamental to both human survival and cultural development.
... Additionally, the somatic marker hypothesis supposes the differentiation between the "body loop" and the "as-if loop". The "body loop" represents actions of the body itself, whereas the "as-if loop" is associated with the brain representation of the expected/ anticipated body action [14]. ...
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Attachment is the evolutionarily-established process through which humans create bonds with others in order to receive care from them. The attachment system is treated as an emotion regulation device as well as a major stress regulatory system. The intergenerational transmission of attachment is one of the core hypotheses of attachment theory. As a new category, cultural attachment was established, referring to processes that allow culture and its symbols to provide psychological security when and individual is facing threat. Additionally, emotions and feelings could be comprised as "somatic markers" which act as signals guiding behaviour towards beneficial outcomes. Thus emotions are very important not only in everyday functioning but also in decision making processes. Relying on multidisciplinary evidence – from neuroscientific, developmental, evolutionary, and clinical sources it was suggested that somaticity, as a specific characteristic of attachment, has the adaptive function to modulate our inclination. In this context, the attachment is confirmed to indispensable emotion in human functioning.
... Longer term follow-up beyond the 18 months investigated here is needed to investigate these hypotheses further. Previous research has consistently shown that the OFC is involved in the processing of reward outcomes in both humans and non-human primates (Bechara, 2000;Kringelbach & Rolls, 2004). Across studies, evidence suggests the involvement of different subregions of the OFC in the processing of different kinds of reward values (e.g. ...
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Background Atypical reward processing is implicated in a range of psychiatric disorders associated with childhood maltreatment and may represent a latent vulnerability mechanism. In this longitudinal study, we investigated the impact of maltreatment on behavioural and neural indices of reward learning in volatile environments and examined associations with future psychopathology assessed 18 months later. Methods Thirty‐seven children and adolescents with documented histories of maltreatment (MT group) and a carefully matched group of 32 non‐maltreated individuals (NMT group) aged 10–16 were presented with a probabilistic reinforcement learning task featuring a phase of stable and a phase of volatile reward contingencies. Brain activation and connectivity were assessed simultaneously using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Computational models were used to extract individual estimates of learning rates and temperature, and neural signals in prespecified regions of interest were analysed during volatile and stable environments. In regression analyses, behavioural measures and neural signals at baseline were used to predict psychological symptoms at follow‐up. Results The MT group showed lower behavioural exploration, which predicted decreased internalising symptoms at follow‐up. The MT group had lower activation in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) during outcome delivery in volatile relative to stable contexts. OFC connectivity with an area in the mid‐cingulate cortex was also lower during outcome processing, which predicted higher general psychopathology at follow‐up. Conclusions These findings are consistent with the notion that low exploratory behaviour following childhood maltreatment is potentially a protective adaptation against internalising symptoms, while disrupted neural processing of reward learning in volatile environments may index latent vulnerability to mental illness.
... The state of a human being is governed by its physiological characteristics and the available information [85,86]. These properties are continuously changing in time. ...
Preprint
A survey is given summarizing the state of the art of describing information processing in Quantum Decision Theory, which has been recently advanced as a novel variant of decision making, based on the mathematical theory of separable Hilbert spaces. This mathematical structure captures the effect of superposition of composite prospects, including many incorporated intended actions. The theory characterizes entangled decision making, non-commutativity of subsequent decisions, and intention interference. The self-consistent procedure of decision making, in the frame of the quantum decision theory, takes into account both the available objective information as well as subjective contextual effects. This quantum approach avoids any paradox typical of classical decision theory. Conditional maximization of entropy, equivalent to the minimization of an information functional, makes it possible to connect the quantum and classical decision theories, showing that the latter is the limit of the former under vanishing interference terms.
... Human survival and reproduction, like that of any other species, is the result of an evolutionary process. As social animals, it is likely that human evolution has selected instinctive and emotional behaviors (Damasio, 1994;Bonanno, 2001;Bechara et al., 2000), which promote better survival and reproduction abilities through collective actions. Evolutionary feedback selection can be embedded in bounded rational choice theory, and relates to evolutionary psychology (Ghiselin, 1973;Barkow et al., 1992;Tooby and Cosmides, 1996), whose rationality can only be ultimately understood at the group level, through a kind of "renormalization" by the emergence mechanism (Anderson, 1972;Goldenfeld and Kadanoff, 1999). ...
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Strong reciprocity is a fundamental human characteristic associated with our extraordinary sociality and cooperation. Laboratory experiments on social dilemma games and many field studies have quantified well-defined levels of cooperation and propensity to punish/reward. The level of cooperation is observed to be strongly dependent on the availability of punishments and/or rewards. Here, we suggest that the propensity for altruistic punishment and reward is an emergent property that has co-evolved with cooperation by providing an efficient feedback mechanism through both biological and cultural interactions. By favoring high survival probability and large individual gains, the propensity for altruistic punishment and rewards reconciles self- and group interests. We show that a simple cost/benefit analysis at the level of a single agent, who anticipates the action of her fellows, determines an optimal level of altruistic punishment, which explains quantitatively experimental results on the third-party punishment game, the ultimatum game and altruistic punishment games. We also report numerical simulations of an evolutionary agent-based model of repeated agent interactions with feedback-by-punishments, which confirms that the propensity to punish is a robust emergent property selected by the evolutionary rules of the model.
... " This equates to the argument developed at some length by Earl (2014), that choices and decisions are not made consciously, but instead are initiated unconsciously and modulated by conscious inputs as they unfold, or the statement by Wegner (2003, p. 68) that the experience of conscious will is "no more than a rough and ready guide to causation. " Figure 2B illustrates this with a diagram of what I will refer to as a memorydependent intervention sequence (MDIS), which has features in common with other proposals, notably Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis (see Bechara et al., 2000). It is the intervention aspect specifically that is important here, that conscious inputs are intervening, with a time delay, to modulate non-conscious processes already in progress. ...
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The functions of consciousness, viewed from an evolutionary standpoint, can be categorized as being either general or particular. There are two general functions, meaning those that do not depend on the particulars of how consciousness influences behavior or how and why it first evolved: of (1) expanding the behavioral repertoire of the individual through the gradual accumulation of neurocircuitry innovations incorporating consciousness that would not exist without it, and (2) reducing the time scale over which preprogrammed behaviors can be altered, from evolutionary time, across generations, to real-time. But neither answers Velmans’ question, of why consciousness is adaptive in a proximate sense, and hence why it would have evolved, which depends on identifying the particular function it first performed. Memory arguably plays a role here, as a strong case can be made that consciousness first evolved to make motivational control more responsive, though memory, to the past life experiences of the individual. A control mechanism of this kind could, for example, have evolved to consciously inhibit appetitive behaviors, whether consciously instigated or not, that would otherwise expose the individual to harm. There is then the question of whether, for amniote vertebrates, a role in memory formation and access would have led directly to a wider role for consciousness in the way the brain operates, or if some other explanation is required. Velmans’ question might then have two answers, the second having more to do with the advantages of global oversight for the control of behavior, as in a global workspace, or for conferring meaning on sensory experience in a way that non-conscious neural processes cannot. Meaning in this context refers specifically to the way valence is embodied in the genomic instructions for assembling the neurocircuitry responsible for phenomenal contents, so it constitutes an embodied form of species memory, and a way of thinking about the adaptive utility of consciousness that is less concerned with real-time mechanistic events than with information storage on an evolutionary time scale.
... This finding aligns with evidence suggesting a "stop function" for this region in inhibiting actions that may lead to negative outcomes (Robbins, 2007;Aron et al., 2014). These results are consistent with previous research indicating the involvement of other parts of the OFC in emotional regulation and decision-making under risk (Bechara et al., 2000;O'Doherty et al., 2001). ...
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Mood disorders are associated with complex disruptions in brain networks, including those associated with the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC). The functional contribution of the caudal OFC (cOFC) has remained largely unexplored. We investigated the functions of the cOFC and pACC in macaques performing an approach-avoidance task by the combination of multimodal recordings and electrical microstimulation (EMS) of the cOFC. We assessed neural, autonomic and behavioral responses. We found the cOFC to be sensitive to both positive and negative stimuli, whereas the pACC was singificantly more active during aversive outcomes. EMS of the cOFC increased avoidance behavior, suggesting a causal role for the OFC subdivision in cost-benefit decision-making. Physiological measurements were positively correlated with behavioral patterns, emphasizing body-brain synchronization during emotionally significant decision-making. We suggest that the cOFC contributes to inducing pessimistic states, thereby making its dysfunction a potential contributor to the etiology of mood disorders.
... Nonetheless, relying on the limited available studies of OCPD and integrating data from related constructs (e.g., executive dysfunction, inflexibility, perfectionism, neuroticism), one can postulate that variability in neural circuits involved in executive function and emotional processing may contribute to OCPD. Most notably, the following regions may be involved in OCPD: (a) the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), which has been linked to decision making and valuation and may be involved in pathological task perseveration (Bechara et al., 2000;Walton et al., 2011); (b) the dorsal and rostral anterior cingulate cortices (dACC, rACC), which are associated with behavioral control and conflict monitoring (Carter & van Veen, 2007;Shenhav et al., 2016) and cognitive control (Tang et al., 2019), respectively, and may contribute to inflexibility in OCPD; (c) the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), which contributes to plan formation and potentially perseverative planning (Kaller et al., 2011;Mushiake et al., 2006); (d) right inferior frontal gyrus, which is associated with inhibition of response tendencies (Aron et al., 2014); (e) insula, which has been associated with empathy and adaptive/flexible behavior to environmental stimuli (Singer et al., 2009), that may be involved in scrupulousness and rigidity in OCPD; (f) posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus, which, through their links to self-referential thought and rumination, may contribute to perfectionism and preoccupation with plans in OCPD (Brewer et al., 2013;Cavanna & Trimble, 2006;H. X. Zhou et al., 2020); and (g) striatal regions, including the caudate and ventral striatum, which are involved in executive planning and response switching (Grahn et al., 2008) and motivation (Cardinal et al., 2002), respectively. ...
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Brain structure correlates of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) remain poorly understood as limited OCPD assessment has precluded well-powered studies. Here, we tested whether machine learning (ML; elastic net regression, gradient boosting machines, support vector regression with linear and radial kernels) could estimate OCPD scores from personality data and whether ML-predicted scores are associated with indices of brain structure (cortical thickness and surface area and subcortical volumes). Among older adults (ns = 898–1,606) who completed multiple OCPD assessments, ML elastic net regression with Revised NEO Personality Inventory personality items as features best predicted Five-Factor Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory—Short Form (FFOCI-SF) scores, root-mean-squared error (RMSE)/SD = 0.66; performance generalized to a sample of college students (n = 175; RMSE/SD = 0.51). Items from all five-factor model personality traits contributed to predicted FFOCI-SF (p-FFOCI-SF) scores; conscientiousness and openness items were the most influential. In college students (n = 1,253), univariate analyses of cortical thickness, surface area, and subcortical volumes revealed only a positive association between p-FFOCI-SF and right superior frontal gyrus cortical thickness after adjusting for multiple testing (b = 2.21, p = .0014; all other |b|s < 1.04; all other ps > .009). Multivariate ML models of brain features predicting FFOCI, conscientiousness, and neuroticism performed poorly (RMSE/SDs > 1.00). These data reveal that all five-factor model traits contribute to maladaptive OCPD traits and identify greater right superior frontal gyrus cortical thickness as a promising correlate of OCPD for future study. Broadly, this study highlights the utility of ML to estimate unmeasured psychopathology phenotypes in neuroimaging data sets but that our application of ML to neuroimaging may not resolve unreliable associations and small effects characteristic of univariate psychiatric neuroimaging research.
... Subject preferences may be guided by both cognitive decision making as well as intrinsic somatic states (i.e., autonomic processes) that accompany the situation in which one needs to make a choice. These somatic states influence decision making and appear to be associated with ventro-medial frontal functions (Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, 2000). We call such decision making, to which a "correct-incorrect" metric does not apply, "agent-centered" (as distinct from "veridical"). ...
Article
Much of human cognition is “agent-centered,” subjective, and in that sense relative, directed at deciding, “What is best for me”. This is very different from “veridical” cognition, directed at finding an objectively correct solution inherent in the task and independent of the agent. The frontal lobes in particular are central to agent-centered decision making. Yet very little is available in the arsenal of cognitive paradigms used in the cognitive neuroscience research and in clinical neuropsychology test design to examine “agent-centered” decision making. Current paradigms and tests used to measure decision making clinically and experimentally are veridical in nature and as such miss the essence of “agent-centered” cognition. The dearth of “agent-centered” cognitive paradigms severely limits our ability to understand fully the function and dysfunction of the frontal lobes. The Cognitive Bias Task (CBT) is an agent-centered paradigm designed to fill this gap. CBT has been used as a cognitive activation task in fMRI, SPECT, and EEG, as well as in studies of normal development, addiction, dementia, focal lesions, and schizophrenia. This resulted in a range of findings that eluded more traditional “veridical” paradigms and are reviewed here. Key Words: Decision Making; Cognitive Bias Task; Cognition La Toma de Decisiones Centrada en el Agente en la Cognición Normal y Anormal: Gran parte de la cognición humana está "centrada en el agente", es subjetiva, y en ese sentido, está dirigida a decidir: "¿Qué es lo mejor para mí?". Esta es una perspectiva muy diferente a la de la cognición "verídica", que está más dirigida a encontrar una solución objetivamente correcta, inherente a la tarea, e independiente del agente. Los lóbulos frontales, en particular, son fundamentales para la toma de decisiones "centrada en el agente". Sin embargo, existen pocos paradigmas cognitivos en el marco de la neurociencia cognitiva y de la neuropsicología clínica, que se hayan diseñado para evaluar la toma de decisiones "centrada en el agente". Los paradigmas actuales y las pruebas utilizadas para medir la toma de decisiones clínica y experimentalmente son "verídicos" en su naturaleza y, por lo mismo, no son adecuados para la evaluación de la cognición "centrada en el agente". La escasez de paradigmas "centrados en el agente" limita severamente nuestra capacidad de entender plenamente la función y la disfunción de los lóbulos frontales. Al respecto, la Tarea de Sesgo Cognitivo (o Cognitive Bias Task, CBT) es un paradigma "centrado en el agente" diseñado para llenar este vacío. La CBT se ha utilizado como una tarea de activación cognitiva en estudios de IRMf, SPECT y EEG, así como en estudios del desarrollo normal, adicciones, demencia, lesiones focales, y esquizofrenia. Consecuentemente, se han obtenido hallazgos que evitan algunas de las limitaciones de los paradigmas más tradiciones, "verídicos", y que se revisan en este artículo. Palabras claves: Toma de Decisiones; Tarea Con Preferencia Cognitiva; Cognición
... AMH also had wider orbitofrontal cortices (OFC) compared to Neandertals (Hublin et al., 2015). The OFC is intimately connected to the limbic system, and together, they play a critical role in social and emotional decision-making: inhibiting responses, representing speci c stimulus-outcome associations, guiding behavior by signaling emotional markers, predicting errors and assigning them to appropriate causes, and inferring value in economic determinations (e.g., Bechara et al., 2000;Nejati et al., 2018;Stalnaker et al., 2015). ...
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In discussions of the Neandertal extinction, morphological differences in brain shape and brain regions between Homo sapiens and Neandertals are often ignored or dismissed as inconsequential, despite the fact that skull shape is diagnostic of the species to which a specimen belongs. The purpose of the present chapter is to discuss the potential cognitive consequences of three well-established brain differences and their possible eventual role in the extinction of Neandertals. These morphological brain differences include larger olfactory bulbs, expanded parietal lobes, and a larger cerebellum-to-cerebrum ratio in Homo sapiens compared to Neandertals. The phenotypic consequences of these brain differences include better smell identification and sensitivity, with implications for mate selection and disease immunity; enhanced social cognitive abilities and greater theory of mind; and innovation and creativity, respectively.
... For obtaining the more pointed results, neuroscience tools are used to understand the human brain where emotion plays a fundamental role in how to respond to stimulus and this is the biggest different from the standard marketing techniques. Tools which enable marketers to pre-established emotional influence are neuroimaging and non-neuroimaging tools (Bechara et al., 2000). ...
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Neuromarketing is a marketing method by finding its use in the field of neurology, which is neuroscience, and adapting this method into marketing has become a topic of growing interest for both businesses and researchers. The aim of the paper within this framework, articles published on neuromarketing were analysed Web of Science (WOS) site. This study aims to examine the trends in literature related to the field of neuromarketing. The results were restricted by English language, 2013 and 2022 time period and type of the documents: article. Using the only “neuromarketing” keyword. According to filters the study performs a bibliometric analysis of 165 papers on neuromarketing and year of publication, the author's name, journal with most published research, country analysis of articles, keywords, related areas and citation frequency were examined. The results show that Europe is at the forefront of the field. The country which heavily involved in neuromarketing research are Switzerland. Regarding the analysed articles the most used keywords are, other than neuromarketing, brain, attention and responses. Likewise, the most popular journal for neuromarketing article is Frontiers in Psychology.
... The affective processes can be measured based on observation data (e.g., facial expressions), self-reporting (e.g., emotion rating scales), psychophysiological data (e.g., heart rate, skin conductance), and neuroscientific approaches (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging -MRI and electroencephalogram -EEG). Bechara (2000) proposed emotions and feelings as marker signals arising due to bio-regularity processes influencing decision-making consciously or unconsciously. Besides experiencing emotions during decision-making, sometimes decisions are taken to gain the maximum emotional outcome and at other times decisions aim to fulfill self-needs and wants (Weber & Lindemann, 2008). ...
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Spontaneous judgment and decision-making (JDM) are common behaviors that remain ambiguous to be utilized in architecture design studios. A decision-maker (DM) response varies due to individual differences in an architectural design (AD) environment that keeps changing from abstract ideas to concrete design details along the process. The study aims to improve understanding of spontaneous decision-making behaviors based on individual differences during the AD process. Intuitive and deliberate decision-makers (n = 36) identified based on the PID (preference for intuition and deliberation) scale participated as novice (second year) and expert (fourth year) groups of AD students. Electrodermal activity (EDA) was measured along self-assessment during a three-stage time problem of the stratified groups, i.e., deliberate novice (ND), intuitive novice (NI), deliberate expert (ED), and intuitive expert (EI) decision-makers. Differences in physiological changes were observed concerning the stages of AD problem among DM groups. Lesser deviation of EDA was observed among the deliberate style of DMs than the intuitive style. The average EDA of novices peaked during the start whereas the same was found to rise at the end in the case of experts during the time problem. The study discusses individual differences in conditions of spontaneous decision-making behaviors during the AD process based on physiological activation in a time-pressured condition. The study approaches individual differences in design decision-making behaviors from a combined aspect of subject expertise and trait-based conditions along the AD process. It highlights the importance of EDA in future research providing cognitive insights about DM’s behaviors applicable to design thinking and pedagogy.
... En revanche, à notre connaissance, aucune étude fonctionnelle n'a testé ce modèle dans les pathologies psychiatriques. (Bechara et al., 2000;Bhatia & Marsden, 1994;Eslinger & Damasio, 1985;Öngür & Price, 2000;Rosen et al., 2002). Le thalamus dorso-médian et l'amygdale pourraient être également impactés (Fudge et al., 2002;Haber, 2003;Russchen et al., 1985). ...
Thesis
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The purpose of this thesis was to improve our knowledge on the mechanisms of apathy. To this end, we relied on a multidimensional model, that distinguishes three forms – executive, emotional, initiative – underlying by the dysfunction of distinct brain networks. Two complementary approaches were used: phenotypic and transnosographic. Our results reveal motivational deficits of the liking process in healthy subjects in the case of emotional apathy. In patients suffering from schizophrenia or depression, it is the wanting process that seems to be more affected. Executive apathy is associated, for all subjects, with disorders of proactive cognitive control, while initiation apathy is associated with aberrant cost-benefit decision-making. By identifying mechanisms that are specific to each form and by suggesting the existence of potentially more severe forms that are distinct between schizophrenia and depression, our results plead for a better consideration of the apathetic profile of each individual when elaborating his treatment protocol. Keywords : apathy, phenotype, depression, schizophrenia, EEG, ALE meta-analysis, motivation, cognitive control, decision-making
... This knowledge ranges from their manifestations and neurophysiological causality, ontogenetic and phylogenetic prevalence, up to how they are experienced, expressed and interpreted in socialcultural and cognitive contexts. In this regards, neurosciences and affective cognition, as well as the study of the emotional brain, are the foundations of emotional education [8][9][10][11][12]. ...
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Emotional competencies are a set of strategies to identify, comprehend, express and regulate emotions. They are particularly relevant in the educational context. In spite of their important, low emotional competencies have been reported in secondary students. This scoping review aims to synthesize the impact of emotional education programs on secondary students. The PRISMA Scoping method was used by using the Web Of Science, Scopus and Scielo databases. 23 studies were identified, out of which five articles were selected as they met the determined inclusion criteria. The main findings reveal significant improvement of emotional and social skills following school interventions. Specifically, progress was observed in areas such as emotional awareness, emotional regulation, interpersonal skills and emotional knowledge. The results highlight the efficacy of social-emotional learning programs in fostering social-emotional skills and psychosocial health of secondary education students. However, limitations, such as heterogeneity, were identified in the study of such research in Ibero-American countries.
... Emotions have diverse effects on our personality development and daily life. It would not be wrong to say that emotions are also deeply and diversely linked to our decision-making ability [1], inference, attention [2], sense of altruism [3], and quality of life [4]. It has been observed in research surveys that multilayer neural network models have huge potential, but to do so, multilayer neural network models need to be trained with huge training data [5,6]. ...
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Emotions are a crucial aspect of daily life and play vital roles in human interactions as well as in different other domains such as entertainment, healthcare etc. Perhaps, the use of physiological signals can increase the clarity, objectivity, and reliability of communicating emotions. Therefore, because of these reasons researchers have substantially implemented the idea of using physiological signals to recognize the emotions in recent past. Further, electroencephalography (EEG) is the most popular means of recording brain activity and owing to its diversified applications in variety of domains EEG signals have been widely used to recognize the emotions nowadays. Moreover, EEG signals based emotion recognition techniques are non-invasive in nature and also provides high temporal resolution. However, several crucial attempts have been made by the researchers to recognize the emotions using EEG signals. But, there is still a need for an accurate and effective technique for emotion classification based on EEG signals and undoubtedly, developing a pragmatic and effective algorithm in the pursuit of emotion recognition is a challenging task. This paper proposes an innovative Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) and Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) based hybrid model i.e., 'GANFIS' for EEG signals based emotion recognition. The proposed hybrid model renders a layered structure. The first layer of the model consists of N\:N GANs systems in parallel and further the second layer consists of N\:N ANFIS in parallel where N\:N is equal to the types of emotions to be recognized. The objective of designing of this hybrid model is to enhance the recognition accuracy of the emotions consisting of three and four classes. Perhaps, this is an arduous task for the existing state-of-art techniques. In this proposed hybrid model, the most appropriate distribution for classification are inputted to the first layer i.e., to the GAN structures and subsequently the first layer outputs the extracted features. These extracted features possess the succinct characteristics to recognize the emotions. Further, these extracted features are given as input to the second layer i.e., ANFIS for training. Further, the outputs of the second layer are integrated and thus create the feature vector. These feature vectors are given as input to the third layer that is the adaptive layer. Each layer is properly trained. Furthermore, the third layer outputs the classes of emotions. In addition, the performance of proposed hybrid model is tested and validated on two benchmark datasets. These are: the Feeling Emotion dataset and DEAP dataset. The recognition accuracies obtained from the proposed hybrid model for these datasets are 74.69% and 96.63% respectively. The obtained emotions recognition accuracies superior to accuracies obtained from other state-of-art techniques.
Article
This paper examines the neurobiology of sentience through a comparative analysis of theories proposed by Antonio Damasio and Nicholas Humphrey. Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis emphasizes the role of emotions and feelings in decision-making and consciousness, arguing that the brain's mapping of bodily states forms the basis of subjective experiences. Humphrey, conversely, approaches sentience from an evolutionary perspective, proposing that it evolved to enhance social cognition and cooperation. Both theories stress the importance of central nervous system development in the emergence of sentience, but differ in their views on its evolutionary timing and primary functions. We explore the potential applications of these theories in neuroethics and argue for continued research into sentience, emphasizing its potential impact on ethical and legal frameworks. We call for an interdisciplinary approach, integrating insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and ethics.
Article
State of the art agent-modelling tools support the creation of powerful Socially Intelligent Agents (SIAs) capable of engaging in social interactions with participants in various roles and environments. However, their deployment demands a laborious authoring task as it is necessary to manually define behaviour rules and create content for different interaction scenarios. While Socially Intelligent Agents (SIAs) research has centered on the user experience, we shift focus to the authors. To understand the challenges faced by authors who create these agents, we performed an innovative analysis of the authoring experience in modern agent modelling tools. One key finding is that, while SIA concepts are generally understandable, emotional-based concepts are not as easily comprehended or used by authors. We propose a hybrid solution approach that culminated in the development of Authoring Assisted FAtiMA-Toolkit. The augmented agent modeling tool incorporates a data-driven authoring assistant to boost author productivity while promoting transparency and authorial control. To evaluate the impact of this framework on the authoring experience, we conducted a user study. Results showed that authors using the Authoring-Assisted FAtiMA-Toolkit were on average able to create more SIA-related content in less time. Our findings suggest that data-augmented, theory-grounded agent modeling tools can support the development of affective social agents by reducing the authoring burden without sacrificing the framework’s clarity or the authors’ control over the content
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Human behavior is strongly influenced by anticipation, but the underlying neural mechanisms are poorly understood. We obtained intracranial electrocephalography (iEEG) measurements in neurosurgical patients as they performed a simple sensory-motor task with variable (short or long) foreperiod delays that affected anticipation of the cue to respond. Participants showed two forms of anticipatory response biases, distinguished by more premature false alarms (FAs) or faster response times (RTs) on long-delay trials. These biases had distinct neural signatures in prestimulus neural activity modulations that were distributed and intermixed across the brain: the FA bias was most evident in preparatory motor activity immediately prior to response-cue presentation, whereas the RT bias was most evident in visuospatial activity at the beginning of the foreperiod. These results suggest that human anticipatory behavior emerges from a combination of motor-preparatory and attention-like modulations of neural activity, implemented by anatomically widespread and intermixed, but functionally identifiable, brain networks.
Chapter
The singular, most overriding concern of this chapter is to provide the reader with a framework in which to interpret the exponentially increasing quantity of memory research, with emphasis on the interaction of memory with drugs. Pharmacologic manipulations of memory are used to either (1) understand how drugs affect memory or (2) understand how memory works. Beyond the classic concepts of memory, it is somewhat fruitless to provide a detailed description of the current state of understanding of memory processes, as undoubtedly they will be modified, if not outrightly changed, by the time this book is published. Currently, neurobiologic investigations in humans involve powerful, technologically and/or analytically complex methods to define memory processes. These techniques involve, but are certainly not limited to: Electrophysiology (electroencephalography [EEG], event-related potentials [ERPs]), Magnetoencephalographay (MEG), Detection of neuronal activation responses, Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) measured using positron electron tomography (PET), and Brain oxygen level dependent response (BOLD) as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Chapter
Cocaine abuse throughout the world continues to be a major public-health concern. Drug abuse has enormous psychological, medical, economic, and social costs. Dependence on cocaine has been associated with increased rates of incarceration, high rates of infection with HIV, impaired job performance, and significant family dysfunction. Intense research efforts over the past few decades have resulted in a greatly increased understanding of the neurobiological basis of cocaine’s effects and the adaptations that occur as a result of its chronic use and abuse.
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The current state of mental health treatment for individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder leaves billions of individuals with first-line therapies that are ineffective or burdened with undesirable side effects. One major obstacle is that distinct pathologies may currently be diagnosed as the same disease and prescribed the same treatments. The key to developing antidepressants with ubiquitous efficacy is to first identify a strategy to differentiate between heterogeneous conditions. Major depression is characterized by hallmark features such as anhedonia and a loss of motivation, and it has been recognized that even among inbred mice raised under identical housing conditions, we observe heterogeneity in their susceptibility and resilience to stress. Anhedonia, a condition identified in multiple neuropsychiatric disorders, is described as the inability to experience pleasure and is linked to anomalous medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activity. The mPFC is responsible for higher order functions, such as valence encoding; however, it remains unknown how mPFC valence-specific neuronal population activity is affected during anhedonic conditions. To test this, we implemented the unpredictable chronic mild stress (CMS) protocol in mice and examined hedonic behaviors following stress and ketamine treatment. We used unsupervised clustering to delineate individual variability in hedonic behavior in response to stress. We then performed in vivo 2-photon calcium imaging to longitudinally track mPFC valence-specific neuronal population dynamics during a Pavlovian discrimination task. Chronic mild stress mice exhibited a blunted effect in the ratio of mPFC neural population responses to rewards relative to punishments after stress that rebounds following ketamine treatment. Also, a linear classifier revealed that we can decode susceptibility to chronic mild stress based on mPFC valence-encoding properties prior to stress-exposure and behavioral expression of susceptibility. Lastly, we utilized markerless pose tracking computer vision tools to predict whether a mouse would become resilient or susceptible based on facial expressions during a Pavlovian discrimination task. These results indicate that mPFC valence encoding properties and behavior are predictive of anhedonic states. Altogether, these experiments point to the need for increased granularity in the measurement of both behavior and neural activity, as these factors can predict the predisposition to stress-induced anhedonia.
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Promoting well-being is a philosophy of the World Health Organization (WHO). Although the International Ergonomics & Human Factors Association and Japan Human Factors and Ergonomics Society state that the goal of ergonomics is to optimise human well-being and the overall system performance, the methodology of well-being is still developing. In this study, the importance of play is described as a research topic and the degree of play is explained as a basic indicator. The definition of play here is the activation of one’s reward system through intrinsically-motivated decisions and actions, not for the direct purpose of survival. The playability index is a subjective evaluation method consisting of 12 items. Ergonomic researchers must develop indicators that contribute to the promotion of well-being.
Research Proposal
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Since the dawn of time, humankind's singular ability to make decisions has allowed human beings to face innumerable environmental challenges and complex evolutionary dynamics. Environmental pressures are not so urgent anymore, comparing to our ancestors. Nonetheless, the number of decisions that contemporary humans are called to make is very high. During the last three centuries, the change from normative to descriptive theories, from formal to natural logic, from substantive to limited rationality has allowed us to explain how many of the delusional strategies are coherent with the functioning of the cognitive economy of our species, even if they are limited and fallible.
Chapter
While many in the domain of AI claim that their works are "biologically inspired", most strongly avoid the forms of dynamic complexity that are inherent in all of evolutionary history's more capable surviving organisms. This work seeks to illustrate examples of what introducing human-like forms of complexity into software systems looks like, why it is important, and why humans so frequently seek to avoid such complexity. The complex dynamics of these factors are discussed and illustrated in the context of Chaos Theory, the Three-Body Problem, category concepts, the tension between interacting forces and entities, and cognitive biases influencing how complexity is handled and reduced. For the full-text pre-print see: http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.11390.56641
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In the current context of urgent challenges related to energy crisis, climate change and sustainability, this thesis presented feasible, implementable approaches in offices to reduce HVAC energy consumption while satisfying a varied set of occupants’ needs (comfort, health and productivity). The findings suggest that winter indoor temperatures in offices may be lowered to as much as 17C under dynamic indoor conditions, while respecting thermal comfort, using the designed Personal Comfort System (PCS) that targets extremities. Meanwhile, a healthy cold stimulation to human thermoregulation can indeed be sustained. Thermal discomfort also does not necessarily affect performance in a moderate temperature range. On top of that, a high Correlated Color Temperature lighting (CCT) may further improve thermal comfort in cold conditions and a Personal Lighting System (PLS) can be used to select the beneficial CCT while improving visual comfort. These findings suggest that, in combination with lowering indoor temperature to mild (dynamic) cold in winter, the application of designed PCS (further combined with a high CCT lighting) potentiates significant energy saving and may benefit (metabolic, cardiovascular and circadian) health in the long term. In addition, the designed Personal Environmental Control Systems (PECSs) successfully address individual differences in environmental preferences, and sometimes benefit eye-related symptoms, perceived air quality, work motivation, the mean performance on complex cognitive tasks, alertness, arousal and pleasure. Therefore, the designed PECS (PCS and PLS combined) has great potential for the future to create a healthy, comfortable, productive and energy-efficient office (built) environment.
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Dopamine (DA) is believed to play a crucial role in maintaining the integrity of the rodent orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) networks during risk-based decision-making processes. Chronic pain conditions can lead to impaired DAergic signaling, which, in turn, may affect the motivational control of risk-based responses. Nevertheless, the neural mechanisms underlying this instability are poorly understood. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether this impairment is dependent on the activity of the DA D2 receptor (D2r). To address this hypothesis, we implanted bilateral matrices of multielectrodes into the OFC of male rats and recorded the neural activity while they performed a food-reinforced rodent gambling task (rGT). We evaluated behavioral performance and neural activity patterns before and after inducing a model of inflammatory pain – complete Freund’s adjuvant (CFA) model. Our findings revealed that rats treated with CFA exhibited an abnormal preference for the large/uncertain reward during rGT performance. This altered behavioral choice profile could be reversed by prior systemic administration of D2r ligands (0.05 mg/kg, quinpirole or raclopride), indicating a potential role of D2r in the decision-making process required for this task. The administration of these ligands at the specified dosages did not affect pain responses, but lead to a significant reorganization of OFC neuronal clusters that support goal-directed choice responses in the rGT. Finally, we found evidence that CFA-treated rats exhibit OFC functional changes, namely an upregulation of DA D1 receptor (D1r) and a downregulation of DA beta-hydroxylase (DH). These results demonstrate that the disruption of DAergic balance in the OFC networks is crucial for the development of high-risk decision profiles during painful conditions.
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Introduction: Olfaction is linked to cognition. Understanding brain activity during olfactory dysfunction (OD) could improve knowledge about olfaction itself and associated treatments like olfactory training (OT). Objectives: To study how OD affects brain activity in response to scents Methods: In order to produce a prospective study, a sample of OD and healthy controls was recruited. Participants inhaled scents used in OT and Electroencephalography (EEG) was measured. Results: Brain activation differed between groups for 3 of the 4 scents. Rose: lower Alpha 1 activation in OD (p=0.021); Eucalyptus: lower Beta 1 activation (p = 0.037); Clove: lower Gamma 1, Beta 2 and Alpha 2 activation in OD (p <0.05); Higher Delta activity in OD (p = 0.019). No differences found for lemon inhalation. Conclusions: This study explored brain activity during odor perception in OD. Tailoring OT based on scent and individual brain response shows promise. Further research is needed to explore this connection.
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The university is an environment that allows the student to be able to diversify different situations, and there is a need to train sensitive and empathetic professionals for a competent society. The objective of this research was to design a didactic strategy to develop socioemotional competencies in students at a university in Lima. A qualitative methodology of non-experimental, cross-sectional, and descriptive design was used. The sample consisted of 34 students and four teachers. The techniques used included questionnaires, observations and interviews. The results showed 11 emerging categories, seven of which were approximate to the a priori category and four were influential in the research. A validated didactic strategy was presented with two lines of action composed of three stages: classroom emotional diagnosis, management of socioemotional teaching activities, and transformative evaluation; all under a model of Social and Emotional Learning, the Theory of Emotional Intelligence, and the epistemological positions of Neuroscience in Learning.
Chapter
Emotion and memory have been two intermingled areas in psychological research. Although researchers are still fairly clueless on how human emotions or memory work, several attempts have been made to copy the dynamics of these two entities in the realm of robotics. This chapter describes one such attempt to capture the dynamics of human emotional memories and model the same for use in a real robot. Emotional memories are created at extreme emotional states, namely, very positive or happy events or very negative ones. The positive ones result in the formation of positive memories while the negative ones form the negative counterparts. The robotic system seeks the positive ones while it tries to avoid the negative ones. Such memories aid the system in making the right decisions, especially when situations similar to the one which caused their generation, repeat in the future. This chapter introduces the manner in which a multi-agent emotion engine churns out the emotions which in turn generate emotional memories. Results obtained from simulations and those from using a real situated robot described herein, validate the working of these memories.
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The transferability of music education to cognitive and social skills has been explored recently, but its causal effects remain debatable. This quasi-experimental study aimed to examine the impact of a music education program (Guri) on aspects attention, working memory and socioemotional skills in children from underserved communities of São Paulo, Brazil. The music group (n = 38, 5-9 years) was recruited from 10 centers (polos) distributed across the metropolitan area of São Paulo and the control group (n = 67) consisted of aged-matched children who attended public schools surrounding the polos. The ABEP SES questionnaire and the Raven test were used as control variables, the SDQ questionnaire, the Digit-span subtest from WISC-IV, the PARB-Q questionnaire, and the BPA test were used as subject variables. A significant effect of the intervention in emotional symptoms in the music group as opposed to controls was found (F(1,89) = 4.562, p = 0.035, η ² = 0.049), indicating benefits for the music group. Children whose mothers had low levels of education benefited with gains between 0.70 and 0.95 standard deviations in both groups for divided attention, indicating a significant interaction with maternal education.
Article
The study of rationality is closely linked to the formal study of human judgement and decision-making. Much of the empirical discourse on rationality has been centered on evaluation of quality of human judgments, decisions and behavior. Building upon traditional and recent models in this discourse, this paper examines how motivational and affective processes fundamentally shape rational behavior through their influence on perceptual and cognitive mechanisms. Our analysis demonstrates that rational behavior emerges from the dynamic interaction between motivational drives, emotional states, and cognitive processes, beginning at the earliest stages of information processing. This integrated perspective, grounded in empirical evidence from cognitive neuroscience and psychology, provides new insights into the nature of cognitive biases, suggesting that apparent deviations from rationality may represent adaptive responses when considering how perception and cognition are shaped by motivational and affective states. By emphasizing the foundational role of motivation and affect in driving perceptual and cognitive mechanisms, this work advances our understanding of human rationality and suggests new directions for research.
Article
We examine preliminary results from the first automated system to detect the 188 cognitive biases included in the 2016 Cognitive Bias Codex, as applied to both human and AI-generated text, and compared to a human baseline of performance. The human baseline was constructed from the collective intelligence of a small but diverse group of volunteers independently submitting their detected cognitive biases for each sample in the task used for the first phase. This baseline was used as an approximation of the ground truth on this task, for lack of any prior established and relevant benchmark. Results showed the system's performance to be above that of the average human, but below that of the top-performing human and the collective, with greater performance on a subset of 18 out of the 24 categories in the codex. This version of the system was also applied to analyzing responses to 150 open-ended questions put to each of the top 5 performing closed and open-source Large Language Models, as of the time of testing. Results from this second phase showed measurably higher rates of cognitive bias detection across roughly half of all categories than those observed when analyzing human-generated text. The level of model contamination was also considered for two types of contamination observed, where the models gave canned responses. Levels of cognitive bias detected in each model were compared both to one another and to data from the first phase. For the full-text pre-print see: http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.14044.56967
Chapter
While early interoception research focused on emotional processing, there is a growing interest in investigating the brain–body interaction and the contribution of conscious perception to cognitive processing. This chapter reviews the current literature on the impact of the various dimensions of interoception on learning, memory, and decision-making. First, we present research using implicit and explicit learning paradigms. Though the reported studies contain different learning and memory methods (fear conditioning, word stem completion, recognition, autobiographical memory, and neuropsychological tests), taken together, findings suggest that access to information about bodily states facilitates learning and memory. Findings concerning the role of interoception in decision-making, however, are less consistent. While some results suggest that better interoceptive accuracy improves decision-making under conditions of uncertainty, others indicate both improvement and hindrance of decision-making performance depending on anticipatory bodily signals for different choices. Still, other studies do not find a clear relationship between interoceptive dimensions and decisions under uncertain conditions. Studies on social and moral decision-making are rare but suggest that higher objective interoceptive accuracy is associated with greater psychological and physiological arousal in social decision-making situations. All in all, studies on the relationship between interoception and cognitive functions have focused very strongly on the cardiovascular system largely assessing objective interoceptive accuracy using the heartbeat counting task. More research is required to provide evidence from other domains and tasks. Furthermore, the different measures used across studies and debates surrounding the conceptualization of self-reported interoceptive attention complicate the interpretation of results.
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Purpose During intersex interactions heterosexual men show a temporary cognitive impairment and an increase in risky behaviors. These effects have been interpreted as caused by the negative emotion and stress experienced by men attempting to produce a positive impression of themselves. Under this line of reasoning men’s cognitive performance during a heterosexual interaction is maladaptive and perhaps it could be improved when the audience or target of men’s public performance express positive, supportive feedback. Methods Fifty-eight heterosexual young males were asked to provide a self-presentation and to perform a difficult arithmetical task in front of two female confederates. One group of men interacted with a negative unsupportive audience while the other group interacted with a friendly and supportive audience. We tested men’s decision making in the Iowa Gambling Task after they engaged in this public performance task. Results We found that men self-presenting in front of a friendly female audience engaged in more risky decision making during the last two blocks of the Iowa Gambling Task. There were no differences in parameters of cardiovascular reactivity and no differences of perceived judge’s attractiveness between the two groups. Men exposed to the unfriendly female audience perceived the female judge as more interested in them. Conclusion When heterosexual men self-present and perform in front of a supportive and friendly female audience their risk-taking in the Iowa Gambling Task increases but the exact mechanism leading to this behavior requires further study.
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Gambler’s fallacy, or negative recency effect, is the belief that the probability of an outcome decreases if that outcome has already occurred, even though these occurrences are independent of each other. Therefore, the gambler’s fallacy is a cognitive bias based on the representativeness heuristic, which involves judging how representative an event is of the processes that produce it. Consequently, the gambler’s fallacy results from misattributing properties that are representative of randomness to an individual or „small“ event, where these properties are not applicable. Although gambler’s fallacy was first discussed in 18th-century essays by Hume and Laplace, its contemporary foundations were formed with 20th-century psychophysical psychology. Today, it is established as a robust phenomenon that is most often experimentally demonstrated in people’s outcome predictions in situations of uncertainty, but we consistently observe it in everyday decision-making, such as betting behavior or decisions about insurance policies. Classical normative models of rationality consider gambler’s fallacy as representativeness heuristic bias and view people’s decision-making process through deviations from normative and logical probabilistic principles. Later causal models of rationality understand heuristic reasoning as an effective solution to environmental and cognitive constraints we face. However, the normative frameworks of these models are taken from their classical predecessors. Only with the emergence of ecological models of rationality, heuristic reasoning is understood through different normative standards − the environmental conditions of decision-making are such that heuristics-based predictions lead to better and more correct solutions than their classical counterparts.
Article
Language comprehension is an incremental process with prediction. Delineating various mental states during such a process is critical to understanding the relationship between human cognition and the properties of language. Entropy reduction, which indicates the dynamic decrease of uncertainty as language input unfolds, has been recognized as effective in predicting neural responses during comprehension. According to the entropy reduction hypothesis (Hale, 2006), entropy reduction is related to the processing difficulty of a word, the effect of which may overlap with other well-documented information-theoretical metrics such as surprisal or next-word entropy. However, the processing difficulty was often confused with the information conveyed by a word, especially lacking neural differentiation. We propose that entropy reduction represents the cognitive neural process of information gain that can be dissociated from processing difficulty. This study characterized various information-theoretical metrics using GPT-2 and identified the unique effects of entropy reduction in predicting fMRI time series acquired during language comprehension. In addition to the effects of surprisal and entropy, entropy reduction was associated with activations in the left inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral ventromedial prefrontal cortex, insula, thalamus, basal ganglia, and middle cingulate cortex. The reduction of uncertainty, rather than its fluctuation, proved to be an effective factor in modeling neural responses. The neural substrates underlying the reduction in uncertainty might imply the brain's desire for information regardless of processing difficulty.
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The performance of patients with frontal lobe disease was compared with that of amnesic patients (with etiology of alcoholic Korsakoff's disease or surgically treated ruptured anterior communicating artery aneurysm) on tasks known to be sensitive to frontal lobe damage in nonhuman primates: delayed alternation (DA) and delayed response (DR). Alcoholic patients with no clinical memory impairment served as controls. Results showed that bilateral frontal lobe damage in humans is associated with impairment on both tasks. In addition, there was no relation between performances on DA and DR and performance on standardized tests of memory, a result strengthening the suggestion that the former tasks are not sensitive to anterograde amnesia in humans.
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High-speed magnetic resonance (MR) imaging was used to detect activation in the human prefrontal cortex induced by a spatial working memory task modeled on those used to elucidate neuronal circuits in nonhuman primates. Subjects were required to judge whether the location occupied by the current stimulus had been occupied previously over a sequence of 14 or 15 stimuli presented in various locations. Control tasks were similar in all essential respects, except that the subject's task was to detect when one of the stimuli presented was colored red (color detection) or when a dot briefly appeared within the stimulus (dot detection). In all tasks, two to three target events occurred randomly. The MR signal increased in an area of the middle frontal gyrus corresponding to Brodmann's area 46 in all eight subjects performing the spatial working memory task. Right hemisphere activation was greater and more consistent than left. The MR signal change occurred within 6-9 sec of task onset and declined within a similar period after task completion. An increase in MR signal was also noted in the control tasks, but the magnitude of change was less than that recorded in the working memory task. These differences were replicated when testing was repeated in five of the original subjects. The localization of spatial working memory function in humans to a circumscribed area of the middle frontal gyrus supports the compartmentalization of working memory functions in the human prefrontal cortex and the localization of spatial memory processes to comparable areas in humans and nonhuman primates.
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Regional cerebral blood flow was measured with positron emission tomography during the performance of verbal working memory tasks. The same type of verbal response (i.e., reciting numbers) was required in the control and the two experimental tasks. In the control task, the subjects were required to count aloud. In the two experimental tasks, the subjects were required to maintain within working memory the numbers they generated (self-ordered task) or the numbers generated by the experimenter (externally ordered task). Examination of the difference in activation between these conditions revealed strong bilateral activation within the mid-dorsolateral frontal cortex during both experimental tasks. There was, however, no evidence of additional activation within the mid-dorsolateral frontal cortex when monitoring self-generated responses as compared with the monitoring of externally generated responses. These results provide evidence regarding the role of the mid-dorsolateral frontal cortex in mnemonic processing that are in agreement with recent findings from work with non-human primates.
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The concept of working memory is central to theories of human cognition because working memory is essential to such human skills as language comprehension and deductive reasoning. Working memory is thought to be composed of two parts, a set of buffers that temporarily store information in either a phonological or visuospatial form, and a central executive responsible for various computations such as mental arithmetic. Although most data on working memory come from behavioural studies of normal and brain-injured humans, there is evidence about its physiological basis from invasive studies of monkeys. Here we report positron emission tomography (PET) studies of regional cerebral blood flow in normal humans that reveal activation in right-hemisphere prefrontal, occipital, parietal and premotor cortices accompanying spatial working memory processes. These results begin to uncover the circuitry of a working memory system in humans.
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Working memory involves the short-term maintenance of an active representation of information so that it is available for further processing. Visual working memory tasks, in which subjects retain the memory of a stimulus over brief delays, require both the perceptual encoding of the stimulus and the subsequent maintenance of its representation after the stimulus is removed from view. Such tasks activate multiple areas in visual and prefrontal cortices. To delineate the roles these areas play in perception and working memory maintenance, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to obtain dynamic measures of neural activity related to different components of a face working memory task-non-selective transient responses to visual stimuli, selective transient responses to faces, and sustained responses over memory delays. Three occipitotemporal areas in the ventral object vision pathway had mostly transient responses to stimuli, indicating their predominant role in perceptual processing, whereas three prefrontal areas demonstrated sustained activity over memory delays, indicating their predominant role in working memory. This distinction, however, was not absolute. Additionally, the visual areas demonstrated different degrees of selectivity, and the prefrontal areas demonstrated different strengths of sustained activity, revealing a continuum of functional specialization, from occipital through multiple prefrontal areas, regarding each area's relative contribution to perceptual and mnemonic processing.
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We used a novel computerized decision-making task to compare the decision-making behavior of chronic amphetamine abusers, chronic opiate abusers, and patients with focal lesions of orbital prefrontal cortex (PFC) or dorsolateral/medial PFC. We also assessed the effects of reducing central 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) activity using a tryptophan-depleting amino acid drink in normal volunteers. Chronic amphetamine abusers showed suboptimal decisions (correlated with years of abuse), and deliberated for significantly longer before making their choices. The opiate abusers exhibited only the second of these behavioral changes. Importantly, both sub-optimal choices and increased deliberation times were evident in the patients with damage to orbitofrontal PFC but not other sectors of PFC. Qualitatively, the performance of the subjects with lowered plasma tryptophan was similar to that associated with amphetamine abuse, consistent with recent reports of depleted 5-HT in the orbital regions of PFC of methamphetamine abusers. Overall, these data suggest that chronic amphetamine abusers show similar decision-making deficits to those seen after focal damage to orbitofrontal PFC. These deficits may reflect altered neuromodulation of the orbitofrontal PFC and interconnected limbic-striatal systems by both the ascending 5-HT and mesocortical dopamine (DA) projections.
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Emotion reduces utilization of cues. In some tasks this can be an advantage (elimination of irrelevant cues); more often, however, such reduction inhibits performance. Attentive behavior fits into the framework of this theory. It can also be easily translated into terms of information theory allowing a qualitative evaluation of task difficulty.
Article
Discusses the role of the amygdaloid complex in conditioning of autonomic processes during emotional learning situations. Results from studies on animals and normal humans have implicated at the simplest, the activation of β-adrenergic receptors, and the amygdaloid complex in such learning. Recent experimental results with patients with brain-damage and Urbach-Weithe disease show selective impairment of memory for emotional material (e.g., L. Cahil, et al, 1995), have confirmed this hypothesis for conscious, long-term memory. However, these autonomic processes are not required for normal retention in non-emotionally arousing situations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies have consistently implicated dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as abnormal in schizophrenia. However, other areas of frontal cortex have received far less attention. In particular, few studies have examined orbital frontal regions with other than olfactory tests. In the present study we wished to assess the functional capability of orbital frontal cortex using a test developed by Bechara et al. (1994) that assesses a subject's capacity to acquire a preference through reward and punishment, using a gambling task that involved gains and losses of play money. Thirty normal subjects and 12 patients with schizophrenia (three undifferentiated, eight paranoid, one schizoaffective) comprised the sample in the present study. We found that patients with schizophrenia exhibited a pattern of findings similar to that of normals and dissimilar to that of patients with known orbital frontal damage. In our study, both normal subjects and schizophrenic patients chose most frequently from decks of cards in which there were frequent rewards and infrequent penalties, as might be expected on the basis of operant conditioning literature. We also found that performance on this task was not correlated with tests of working memory or long-term memory, suggesting that the development of a preference may occur implicitly. Our findings also argue against a general deficit in schizophrenia, as performance on the gambling task appeared relatively uncompromised.
Article
Following damage to ventromedial frontal cortices, adults with previously normal personalities develop defects in decision-making and planning that are especially revealed in an abnormal social conduct. The defect repeatedly leads to negative personal consequences. The physiopathology of this disorder is an enigma. We propose that the defect is due to an inability to activate somatic states linked to punishment and reward, that were previously experienced in association with specific social situations, and that must be reactivated in connection with anticipated outcomes of response options. During the processing that follows the perception of a social event, the experience of certain anticipated outcomes of response options would be marked by the reactivation of an appropriate somatic state. Failure to reactivate pertinent somatic markers would deprive the individual of an automatic device to signal ultimately deleterious consequences relative to responses that might nevertheless bring immediate reward (or, alternatively, signal ultimately advantageous outcomes relative to responses that might bring immediate pain). As an example, activation of somatic markers would (1) force attention to future negative consequences, permitting conscious suppression of the responses leading to them and deliberate selection of biologically advantageous responses, and (2) trigger non-conscious inhibition of response states by engagement of subcortical neurotransmitter systems linked to appetitive behaviors. An investigation of this theory in patients with frontal damage reveals that their autonomic responses to socially meaningful stimuli are indeed abnormal, suggesting that such stimuli fail to activate somatic states at the most basic level. On the contrary, elementary unconditioned stimuli (e.g. a loud noise) produce normal autonomic responses.
Article
This article outlines a theoretical framework for the understanding of the neural basis of memory and consciousness, at systems level. It proposes an architecture constituted by: (1) neuron ensembles located in multiple and separate regions of primary and first-order sensory association cortices ("early cortices") and motor cortices; they contain representations of feature fragments inscribed as patterns of activity originally engaged by perceptuomotor interactions; (2) neuron ensembles located downstream from the former throughout single modality cortices (local convergence zones); they inscribe amodal records of the combinatorial arrangement of feature fragments that occurred synchronously during the experience of entities or events in sector (1); (3) neuron ensembles located downstream from the former throughout higher-order association cortices (non-local convergence zones), which inscribe amodal records of the synchronous combinatorial arrangements of local convergence zones during the experience of entities and events in sector (1); (4) feed-forward and feedback projections interlocking reciprocally the neuron ensembles in (1) with those in (2) according to a many-to-one (feed-forward) and one-to-many (feedback) principle. I propose that (a) recall of entities and events occurs when the neuron ensembles in (1) are activated in time-locked fashion; (b) the synchronous activations are directed from convergence zones in (2) and (3); and (c) the process of reactivation is triggered from firing in convergence zones and mediated by feedback projections. This proposal rejects a single anatomical site for the integration of memory and motor processes and a single store for the meaning of entities of events. Meaning is reached by time-locked multiregional retroactivation of widespread fragment records. Only the latter records can become contents of consciousness.
Article
Working memory refers to a system for temporary storage and manipulation of information in the brain, a function critical for a wide range of cognitive operations. It has been proposed that working memory includes a central executive system (CES) to control attention and information flow to and from verbal and spatial short-term memory buffers. Although the prefrontal cortex is activated during both verbal and spatial passive working memory tasks, the brain regions involved in the CES component of working memory have not been identified. We have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain activation during the concurrent performance of two tasks, which is expected to engage the CES. Activation of the prefrontal cortex was observed when both tasks are performed together, but not when they are performed separately. These results support the view that the prefrontal cortex is involved in human working memory.
Article
A patient with selective bilateral damage to the amygdala did not acquire conditioned autonomic responses to visual or auditory stimuli but did acquire the declarative facts about which visual or auditory stimuli were paired with the unconditioned stimulus. By contrast, a patient with selective bilateral damage to the hippocampus failed to acquire the facts but did acquire the conditioning. Finally, a patient with bilateral damage to both amygdala and hippocampal formation acquired neither the conditioning nor the facts. These findings demonstrate a double dissociation of conditioning and declarative knowledge relative to the human amygdala and hippocampus.
Article
Following damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, humans develop a defect in real-life decision-making, which contrasts with otherwise normal intellectual functions. Currently, there is no neuropsychological probe to detect in the laboratory, and the cognitive and neural mechanisms responsible for this defect have resisted explanation. Here, using a novel task which simulates real-life decision-making in the way it factors uncertainty of premises and outcomes, as well as reward and punishment, we find that prefrontal patients, unlike controls, are oblivious to the future consequences of their actions, and seem to be guided by immediate prospects only. This finding offers, for the first time, the possibility of detecting these patients' elusive impairment in the laboratory, measuring it, and investigating its possible causes.
Article
Areas and pathways subserving object and spatial vision are segregated in the visual system. Experiments show that the primate prefrontal cortex is similarly segregated into object and spatial domains. Neurons that code information related to stimulus identity are dissociable, both by function and region, from those that code information related to stimulus location. These findings indicate that the prefrontal cortex contains separate processing mechanisms for remembering "what" and "where" an object is.
Article
The prefrontal cortex is implicated in such human characteristics as volition, planning, abstract reasoning and affect. Frontal-lobe damage can cause disinhibition such that the behaviour of a subject is guided by previously acquired responses that are inappropriate to the current situation. Here we demonstrate that disinhibition, or a loss of inhibitory control, can be selective for particular cognitive functions and that different regions of the prefrontal cortex provide inhibitory control in different aspects of cognitive processing. Thus, whereas damage to the lateral prefrontal cortex (Brodmann's area 9) in monkeys causes a loss of inhibitory control in attentional selection, damage to the orbito-frontal cortex in monkeys causes a loss of inhibitory control in 'affective' processing, thereby impairing the ability to alter behaviour in response to fluctuations in the emotional significance of stimuli. These findings not only support the view that the prefrontal cortex has multiple functions, but also provide evidence for the distribution of different cognitive functions within specific regions of prefrontal cortex.
Article
Following damage to specific sectors of the prefrontal cortex, humans develop a defect in real-life decision making, in spite of otherwise normal intellectual performance. The patients so affected may even realize the consequences of their actions but fail to act accordingly, thus appearing oblivious to the future. The neural basis of this defect has resisted explanation. Here we identify a physiological correlate for the defect and discuss its possible significance. We measured the skin conductance responses (SCRs) of 7 patients with prefrontal damage, and 12 normal controls, during the performance of a novel task, a card game that simulates real-life decision making in the way it factors uncertainty, rewards, and penalties. Both patients and controls generated SCRs after selecting cards that were followed by penalties or by reward. However, after a number of trials, controls also began to generate SCRs prior to their selection of a card, while they pondered from which deck to choose, but no patients showed such anticipatory SCRs. The absence of anticipatory SCRs in patients with prefrontal damage is a correlate of their insensitivity to future outcomes. It is compatible with the idea that these patients fail to activate biasing signals that would serve as value markers in the distinction between choices with good or bad future outcomes; that these signals also participate in the enhancement of attention and working memory relative to representations pertinent to the decision process; and that the signals hail from the bioregulatory machinery that sustains somatic homeostasis and can be expressed in emotion and feeling.
Article
In this article I discuss a hypothesis, known as the somatic marker hypothesis, which I believe is relevant to the understanding of processes of human reasoning and decision making. The ventromedial sector of the prefrontal cortices is critical to the operations postulated here, but the hypothesis does not necessarily apply to prefrontal cortex as a whole and should not be seen as an attempt to unify frontal lobe functions under a single mechanism. The key idea in the hypothesis is that 'marker' signals influence the processes of response to stimuli, at multiple levels of operation, some of which occur overtly (consciously, 'in mind') and some of which occur covertly (non-consciously, in a non-minded manner). The marker signals arise in bioregulatory processes, including those which express themselves in emotions and feelings, but are not necessarily confined to those alone. This is the reason why the markers are termed somatic: they relate to body-state structure and regulation even when they do not arise in the body proper but rather in the brain's representation of the body. Examples of the covert action of 'marker' signals are the undeliberated inhibition of a response learned previously; the introduction of a bias in the selection of an aversive or appetitive mode of behaviour, or in the otherwise deliberate evaluation of varied option-outcome scenarios. Examples of overt action include the conscious 'qualifying' of certain option-outcome scenarios as dangerous or advantageous. The hypothesis rejects attempts to limit human reasoning and decision making to mechanisms relying, in an exclusive and unrelated manner, on either conditioning alone or cognition alone.
Article
The long-term consequences of early prefrontal cortex lesions occurring before 16 months were investigated in two adults. As is the case when such damage occurs in adulthood, the two early-onset patients had severely impaired social behavior despite normal basic cognitive abilities, and showed insensitivity to future consequences of decisions, defective autonomic responses to punishment contingencies and failure to respond to behavioral interventions. Unlike adult-onset patients, however, the two patients had defective social and moral reasoning, suggesting that the acquisition of complex social conventions and moral rules had been impaired. Thus early-onset prefrontal damage resulted in a syndrome resembling psychopathy.