To all of you that hate to draw... A picture, even a not very good one, is worth a million words... http://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0149763405001053-gr1.jpg
Cheers, ~PM From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [agi] Goal Selection Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 19:41:44 -0400 http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/damasioreview.htmlSomatic marker mechanism Perhaps the most fertile of Damasio’s ideas, and one which has had a major influence upon my own work, is the idea of a ‘somatic marker’ mechanism which forms the basis of human consciousness. The somatic marker mechanism is the way in which cognitive representations of the external world interact with cognitive representations of the internal world - where perceptions interact with emotions. Many animals display awareness of external sensory stimuli (eg. monkeys may be aware of specific aspects of the visual environment they see, as demonstrated in innumerable experiments). But what is unusual about humans is that we are also aware of our bodies, our ‘selves’, and this inner-directed attention forms the root of consciousness. Damasio argues that consciousness is based upon an awareness of the ‘somatic’ milieu, and that awareness of inner states evolved because this enables us to use somatic states (ie. emotions) to ‘mark’, and thereby ‘evaluate’, external perceptual information. And this interaction of cognitive representations occurs in working memory (probably located in the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex). For example, when registering the identity of an aggressive man, the body state of fear in response is also registered. In order to use this in planning future action, the brain needs to create a cognitive representation that contains both the external perceptual information (identity of the man) and the internal emotional information (fear in response to that particular man) - and this is achieved in working memory by the simple device of having evolved the ability to project body state representations into working memory where we can be aware of them. AGI | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
