From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rafal@smigrodzki.org)
Date: Sat Jun 14 2003 - 22:40:32 MDT
Damasio's work is fascinating and I am happy you mention it here. On a
somewhat unrelated note - I think we shouldn't draw too far-reaching
conclusions from it - abnormal functioning of the ventromedial cortex
correlates with poor performance in certain cognitive tests, and with the
absence of emotional reactions to some stimuli, that's true. Whether the
emotive qualia are a necessary part of cognitive performance, is not totally
clear. Until we learn *exactly* what the ventromedial cortex is doing, we
can't really tell if taking emotion out of cognition will always result in
problems in our type of cognitive architecture.
Rafal
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin@tsoft.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Cc: "Brett Paatsch" <paatschb@ocean.com.au>
Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2003 4:48 PM
Subject: RE: Damasio (was Damiaso)
> Hi Brett,
>
> Sorry I mangled Antonio Damasio's name. Besides, one could
> have reasonable read what I wrote as googlable, or being a
> genuine reference.
>
> Here a description of what I was refering to: Patients with
> some kinds of brain damage behave exactly like normals on all
> the usual tests. But one kind of test showed what was going
> on, and moreover, illustrated how our emotions are *needed*
> (at present) in our thinking. Here is an excerpt from my
> book:
>
> RISK TAKING: THE GAMBLING EXPERIMENTS Chapter in Damasio's
> "Descartes Error" page 213-215.
>
> Another approach we took to testing the somalic-marker hypothesis
> made use of a task designed by my postdoctoral student.
>
> Frustrated, as all researchers are, by the artificial nature of lost
> experimental neuropsychological tasks, he wanted to develop as
> lifelike a means as possible to assess decision-making performance.
> The clever set of tasks that he devised, and further refined in
> collaboration with Hanna Damasio and Steven Anderson, have come to be
> known in our laboratory, predictably enough, as the "Gambling
> Experiments." Overall, the setting for the experiments is colorful,
> a far cry from the boring manipulations of most other such
> situations. Normals and patients alike enjoy it, and the nature of
> the investigation makes for amusing episodes. I recall the bulging
> eyes and dropped jaw of a distinguished visitor who came to my office
> after walking by the lab where an experiment was in progress.
> "There're people gambling in here!" he informed me in a whisper.
>
> In the basic experiments the subject, known as the "Player," sits in
> one of four decks or cards labeled A, B, C, and D. The Player is
> given a loan of $5,000 (play money but looking like the real thing)
> and told that the goal of the game he is about to play is to lose as
> little as possible of the loan and try to make as much extra money as
> possible. Play consists of turning cards, one at a lime, from any of
> the four leeks, until the experimenter says to stop. The Player thus
> does not know the total number of turns required to end the game.
> The Player is told also that turning any and every card will result
> in earning a sum money, and that every now and then turning some
> cards will result in both earning money and having to pay a sum of
> money to the experimenter. Neither the amounts of gain or loss in
> any card, nor the cards' connection to a specific deck, nor the order
> of their appearance is disclosed at the outset. The amount to be
> earned or paid with a given card is disclosed only after the card is
> turned. No other instruction is provided. The tally of how much
> has been earned or lost at any point is not disclosed, and the
> subject is not allowed to keep written notes.
>
> The turning of any card in decks A and B pays a handsome $100, while
> the turning of any card in decks C and D only pays $50. Cards keep
> being turned on any deck, and quite unpredictably, certain cards in
> decks A and B (the $100-paying decks) require the Player to make a
> sudden nigh payment, sometimes as much as $1,250. Likewise, certain
> cards in decks C and D (the $50-paying decks) also require a payment,
> but the sums are much smaller, less than $100 on the average. These
> undisclosed rules are never changed. Unbeknownst to the Player, the
> game will be terminated after 100 plays. There e is no way for the
> Player to predict, at the outset, what will happen , and no way to
> keep in mind a precise tally of gains and losses as the game
> proceeds. Just as in life, where much of the knowledge by which we
> live and by which we construct our adaptive future is doled out bit
> by bit, as experience accrues, uncertainty reigns. Our
> knowledge---and the Player's ---is shaped by both the world with
> which we interact and by the biases inherent in our organism, for
> example, our preferences for gain over loss, for reward over
> punishment, for low risk over high risk.
>
> What regular folds do in the experiment is interesting. They begin
> by sampling from all four decks, in search of patterns and clues.
> Then, more often than not, perhaps lured by the experience of high
> reward from turning cards in the A and B decks, they show an early
> preference for those decks. Gradually,k however, within the first
> thirty moves, they switch the preference to decks C and D. In
> general, they stick to this strategy until the end, although
> self-professed high-risk players may resample decks A and B
> occasionally, only to return to the apparently more prudent course of
> action.
>
> There is no way for players to carry out a precise calculation of
> gains and losses. Rather, bit by bit, they develop a hunch that some
> decks---namely, A and B---are more "dangerous" than others. One
> might say they intuit that the lower penalties in decks C and D will
> make them come out ahead in the long run, despite the smaller initial
> gain. I suspect that before and beneath the conscious hunch there is
> a nonconscious process gradually formulating a prediction for the
> outcome of each move, and gradually telling the mindful player, at
> first softly but then ever louder, that punishment or reward is about
> to strike *if* a certain move is indeed carried out. In short, I
> doubt that it is a matter of only fully conscious process, or only
> fully nonconscious process. It seems to take both types of
> processing for the well-tempered decision-making brain to operate.
>
> The behavior of ventromedial frontal patients in this experiment was
> most informative. What they did in the card game resembled what they
> often have done in real life since they sustained their brain lesion,
> and differed from what they would have done before the lesion.
>
> Perhaps this can now be found on-line somewhere too. I'll look around,
> because I consider this experiment absolutely fundamental.
>
> Lee
>
>
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