Pure reason is a disease!!



"But Damasio sought out patients who had suffered brain injuries that prevented them from perceiving their own feelings, and put this idea to the test. The lives of these patients quickly fell apart, he found, because they could not make effective decisions. Some made terrible investments and ended up bankrupt; most just spent hours deliberating over irrelevant details, such as where to eat lunch. These results suggest that proper thinking requires feeling. Pure reason is a disease."


Hearts & Minds by Jonah Lehrer

2 comments:

dr_drsh said...

An informative article "At last :P"

I have a comment on that part you quoted, 1st off, how did he make sure that the injury caused them to lose their "inner voice"?

I mean can I use an electrode to disable your emotions for instance? was it that "easy" to find subject(S) with such ,I believe to be,extremely rare injury?


The article is also more about psychiatry/psychology , nothing about neurology, Are you switching fields yad? :p

Mohammad Aboul-wafa said...

I think "wallahu a3lam", the damage is to the orbital prefrontal cortex, this is a pattern similar to its damage.(I am still searching the paper for Damasio)
The prefrontal cortex receives data from the sensory systems( the dorsal aspects of it) and limbic system (the ventral parts roughly)..the damage to the limbic feeding to the prefrontal cortex cancels the emotional contribution to executive process in the prefrontal cortex.



second, this was not meant to be informative primarily :@

Third you are supposed to know this particular issue we have long discussed before reading this damasio's findings