Emotion and decision-making after frontal lobe damage: implications for understanding certain disorders from psychiatry

The hypothesis of somatic markers slates that decision making is not only g uided by cognitive factors but also by higher order emotional conditioning. The experiments:on which this hypothesis is based are explained and discus sed. They were conducted with patients with lesions in the ventromedial pre frontal cortex, the amygdala or the somatosensory cortices. Their relevance or psychiatric disorders are considered.