In Antonio Damasio’s book Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, he writes about people who suffer an injury to the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex (VMPFC) just behind the bridge of the nose. “Their emotionality dropped nearly to zero. They could look at the most joyous or gruesome photographs and feel nothing. They retained moral knowledge and showed no deficits in IQ, they even scored well in Kohlberg’s test of moral reasoning, yet when it came to making moral decisions in their personal lives and at work, they made foolish decisions or no decisions at all. They alienated their families and their employers and their lives fell apart. Damasio’s interpretation was that gut feelings and bodily reactions were necessary to think rationally and that one job of the VMPFC was to integrate those gut feelings into a person’s conscious reactions.” (The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt)
In September of 1985, I smashed my head on my steering wheel after running my VW Bug into a parked school bus at 30 mph. I got about 25 stitches across the bridge of my nose.
“Damasio’s patients could think about anything with no filtering or coloring from their emotions. Every option felt as good as the other… You’d make foolish decisions too.” (Haidt)
That describes my adult life. Every option feels about the same.
