Criticism
Some researchers believe that the use of somatic markers (i.e., afferent feedback) would be a very inefficient method of influencing behavior. Damasio's notion of the as-if experience dependent feedback route, whereby bodily responses are re-represented utilizing the somatosensory cortex (postcentral gyrus), also proposes an inefficient method of affecting explicit behavior. Rolls (1999) stated that; "it would be very inefficient and noisy to place in the execution route a peripheral response, and transducers to attempt to measure that peripheral response, itself a notoriously difficult procedure" (p. 73). Reinforcement association located in the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala, where the incentive value of stimuli is decoded, is sufficient to elicit emotion-based learning and to affect behavior via, for example, the orbitofrontal-striatal pathway. This process can occur via implicit or explicit processes.
The Somatic Marker Hypothesis represents an intriguing model of how feedback from the body may contribute to both advantageous and disadvantageous decision-making in situations of complexity and uncertainty. Much of this support comes from data taken from the Iowa Gambling Task. While the Iowa Gambling Task has proven to be an ecologically valid measure of decision-making impairment, there exist three assumptions that need to hold true. First, the claim that it assesses implicit learning as the reward/punishment design is inconsistent with data showing accurate knowledge of the task possibilities and that mechanisms such as working-memory appear to have a strong influence. Second, the claim that this knowledge occurs through preventive marker signals is not supported by competing explanations of the psychophysiology generated profile. Lastly, the claim that the impairment is due to a ‘myopia for the future’ is undermined by more plausible psychological mechanisms explaining deficits on the tasks such as reversal learning, risk-taking, and working-memory deficits. There may also be more variability in control performance than previously thought, thus complicating the interpretation of the findings. Furthermore, although the Somatic Marker Hypothesis has accurately identified many of the brain regions involved in decision-making, emotion, and body-state representation, it has failed to clearly demonstrate how these processes interact at a psychological and evolutionary level. There are many experiments that could be implemented to further test the Somatic Marker Hypothesis. One way would be to develop variants of the Iowa Gambling Task that control some of the methodological issues and interpretation ambiguities generated. It may be a good idea to include removing the reversal learning confound, which would make the task more difficult to consciously comprehend. Additionally, causal tests of the Somatic Marker Hypothesis could be practiced more insistently in a greater range of populations with altered peripheral feedback, like on patients with facial paralysis. In conclusion, the Somatic Marker Hypothesis needs to be tested in more experiments. Until a wider range of empirical approaches are employed in order to test the Somatic Marker Hypothesis, it appears that the framework is simply an intriguing idea that is in need of some better supporting evidence. Despite these issues, the Somatic Marker Hypothesis and the Iowa Gambling Task reestablish the notion that emotion has the potential to be a benefit as well as a problem during the decision-making process in humans.
Read more about this topic: Somatic Marker Hypothesis
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