PSYCH253 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex, Phineas Gage, Prefrontal Cortex
2 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Emotion
Emotion causes bias and can therefore be seen as a bad thing.
-Emotions help us make more rational decisions
-Phineas Gage had a railway pipe drove through his head tearing away pieces of his brain
-He wasn’t the same person
-Didn’t have the same sense of humour
-He made bad decisions and had bad social interactions
-Shows that emotion plays a huge part in making decisions
-E.V.R was a 30 yr old that had a tumour that had to be removed
-Damage to prefrontal cortex
-Before he was a successful business man and respected
-After surgery
-Needed prompting to get up to work
-He couldn’t be trusted
-Acted inappropriately and fired
-Got divorced - twice
-Went bankrupt
-Had a suprerior IQ: verbally fluent
-Normal-superior memory and attentional skills
-Normal ability t make estimates with limited information
-Normal performance on hypothetical ethical dilemmas
-Normal ability to generate solutions to social problems
-Superior to anticipate consequences
-Abnormal emotional reactions
-No emotions when describing tragedies of his own life
-Detached sense of humor
-Unemotional at work
-Abnormal reactions to affectively charged visual imagery
Antonios Damasio’s somatic marker theory of human judgement
-somatic marker - gut feeling
-Somatic marker force are attention to emotional outcome
-It can serve as a signal to reject high risk options, narrowing the decision making it more
manageable for logical, cost benefit analysis
Towa Gambling Task
-Subjects: Patients with bilateral ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage and matched controls
(no damage brain)
-Players had $2000 fake US bills, aim is to lose least amount of money
-You made money by drawing from different decks ($100 and B, $50 in decks C and D)
-Unpredictably, turning each deck has a higher penalty in decks A and B than in C and D
-Constantly playing decks A and B can be disadvantageous
-Measured their arousal when they picked from A and B
Results
-After sampling from all decks, before encountering losses, all preferred decks A and B and
did not generate anticipatory SCRs (pre-punishement phase)
Document Summary
Emotion causes bias and can therefore be seen as a bad thing. Emotions help us make more rational decisions. Phineas gage had a railway pipe drove through his head tearing away pieces of his brain. Didn"t have the same sense of humour. He made bad decisions and had bad social interactions. Shows that emotion plays a huge part in making decisions. E. v. r was a 30 yr old that had a tumour that had to be removed. Before he was a successful business man and respected. Needed prompting to get up to work. Normal ability t make estimates with limited information. Normal ability to generate solutions to social problems. No emotions when describing tragedies of his own life. Abnormal reactions to affectively charged visual imagery. Antonios damasio"s somatic marker theory of human judgement. Somatic marker force are attention to emotional outcome.
