Do we need emotions to make decisions? In this video I describe Antonio Damasio's Somatic Marker Hypothesis and then discuss research using Antoine Bechara's Iowa Gambling Task to assess how emotional reactivity guides decisionmaking in healthy controls and patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Antonio Damasio: https://amzn.to/3C5iZTg (Amazon affiliate link)

Phineas Gage Brain Imagery from:
Van Horn, J. D., Irimia, A., Torgerson, C. M., Chambers, M. C., Kikinis, R., & Toga, A. W. (2012). Mapping Connectivity Damage in the Case of Phineas Gage. PLoS ONE, 7(5), e37454. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0037454
10.1371/journal.pone.0037454
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...

Bechara, Antoine; Damasio, Hanna; Damasio, Antonio R.; Lee, Gregory P. (1999). Different Contributions of the Human Amygdala and Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex to DecisionMaking. The Journal of Neuroscience, 19(13), 5473–5481. doi:10.1523/jneurosci.191305473.1999
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...