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Disorders of Emotion Recognition and Expression
Published in Tom M. McMillan, Rodger Ll. Wood, Neurobehavioural Disability and Social Handicap following Traumatic Brain Injury, 2017
Claire Williams, Rodger Ll. Wood
Therefore it appears that too little emotion may be just as detrimental for good decision making as too much emotion. This was the basis of the somatic marker hypothesis (Damasio, 1996), developed to explain how emotions can guide decision making. Damasio postulated that somatic signals associated with emotion can enhance attention and working memory that relate to conditions relevant to the decision making process. This occurs when sensory representations of a decision-making situation activate neural systems associated with dispositional knowledge about one’s previous emotional experience in similar situations. Specific events activate somatosensory structures such as the amygdala, hypothalamus and brain stem, to reconstruct the kind of somatic state that was part of the original experience, prompting appetitive or aversive. An event will activate autonomic and transmitter nuclei that mediate cognitive evaluation and reasoning to generate potential response options and associated outcomes. In turn this imposes limitations on reasoning and decision-making activities by marking potential outcomes as good or bad. Therefore, somatic markers, whether they are perceived consciously in the form of feelings or unconsciously in the regulation of homeostatic states, provide critical signals needed for reasoning and decision making, especially for activities that occur in a social context.
ENTRIES A–Z
Published in Philip Winn, Dictionary of Biological Psychology, 2003
One further point is worth considering. Sensory processes; learning and memory, and the organization of motor systems are things achieved by all of the VERTEBRATES and a great many INVERTEBRATES. These seem to be fundamental neural properties. In humans at least, one has also to consider emotions. States such as hunger or thirst do not have the same status as visual perception or learning. Hunger and thirst are types of EMOTION, interpretations of bodily states that we learn to make for ourselves. It has been argued that emotions are critical for decision-making (see SOMATIC MARKER HYPOTHESIS) but it can also be argued that emotions are not intrinsic brain properties. As Ryle (1949) suggested, they are things for which diagnoses are required rather than things required for making diagnoses. How emotions localize to brain systems is a complex issue.
Posttraumatic Personality Disorders
Published in Rolland S. Parker, Concussive Brain Trauma, 2016
The ventromedial frontal cortex participates in a larger neural network, devoted to the integration of somatic tags with stored knowledge reflecting social conduct. This helps us to understand why some patients passively watch stimuli rather than actively respond (galvanic skin response). Patients with ventromedial frontal lobe lesions select appropriate interpersonal behavior on verbal tests but fail to perform in real situations (Grafman, 1995). Although ventromedial patients were intact in neuropsychological laboratory tests, they have a compromised ability to express emotion and experience feelings. Tucker’s “somatic marker hypothesis” holds that these somatic changes are an essential aspect of the process of emotion, although rationality depends upon other systems. In assessing outcome or possible adaptive success of the injured person, a source of information not clinically available are somatic markers. They serve as an “alarm signal,” which, if not activated, do not represent a negative or positive outcome for a response option. When earlier neural states are reprocessed, this signal is received by the ventromedial cortices, which then activates somatic effectors in the amygdala, hippocampus, and brainstem. The reenacted somatic state signals cortical and subcortical somatosensory processing structures, which modify appetitive or aversive behaviors. Different networks are used for processing unconditioned stimuli and those that require complex information processing. Ventromedial frontal damage precludes this process (Damasio, 1995; Damasio & Anderson, 2003; Tucker et al., 1995).
Association of Hypnotizability, Interoception, and Emotion
Published in International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 2023
Žan Zelič, Laura Sebastiani, Enrica Laura Santarcangelo
Bodily signals are processed by various brain structures, the most important being the anterior insula, somatosensory cortex, precentral, and inferior frontal gyrus. Although the temporal, dorsolateral prefrontal, orbitofrontal, occipital, and medial parietal cortex, as well as the amygdala, are also reached by information spreading from the insula and the cingulate cortex (Stern et al., 2017). Such widespread distribution of the visceral signals suggests their great relevance to the conscious and unconscious experience of the self (Critchley & Harrison, 2013; Damasio, 1996; Quadt et al., 2018). In the same vein, the cardiac signals (Schandry, 1981) survive to the thalamic gate during deep sleep and to the change of brain activity occurring during REM sleep (Coenen, 1995; Lechinger et al., 2015). Indeed, visceral activity is involved in consciousness, as suggested by the somatic marker hypothesis and the functions of the prefrontal cortex (Damasio, 1996). Detecting brain-heart interactions can assist in identifying residual consciousness in patients unable to behaviorally respond to stimulations (Candia-Rivera, 2022).
Males with low risk-taking propensity overestimate risk under acute psychological stress
Published in Stress, 2021
Peishan Wang, Ruolei Gu, Jingyu Zhang, Xianghong Sun, Liang Zhang
In our opinion, these findings are in line with the classic somatic marker hypothesis (Damasio & Tranel, 1991). According to this hypothesis, decision-making is guided by “marker signals” including emotions and feelings; critically, these marker signals arise in bioregulatory processes that may or may not be associated with the current decision situation (Bechara, 2004; Bechara et al., 2000; Naqvi et al., 2006). In our study, the participants’ feedback learning performance during the BART has been significantly affected by their changes in the stress level. However, these changes are modulated by a priming procedure that had no relationship with the BART. Here, one possibility is that the participants’ stress responses were mistakenly treated as “marker signals” during feedback evaluation.
Laughter yoga reduces the cortisol response to acute stress in healthy individuals
Published in Stress, 2021
Maria Meier, Lisa Wirz, Philip Dickinson, Jens C. Pruessner
Although LY was able to reduce the cortisol stress response, the subjective stress ratings were unaffected by the intervention. We assumed that LY would have the potential to influence both responses, however, the emotional and physiological stress response do not necessarily correspond (Ali et al., 2017; Campbell & Ehlert, 2012). In accordance with the somatic marker hypothesis (Damasio et al., 1996), one could assume that the rating of a current emotional state relies on the self-percepted, acute physiological state one’s body is currently in. Studies have shown that both, cardiovascular arousal and the experience of negative emotions are represented and processed in similar brain areas (Pollatos et al., 2007). Since the current state of the autonomic nervous system can be inferred through interoception focusing on the heart-rate, and the autonomic stress response was not as strongly affected by LY as the endocrine system, the subjective stress ratings might be a consequence of the activation of the sympathetic nervous system.