Lehrer explains that the OFC is "responsible for integrating visceral emotions into the decisionmaking process. It connects the feelings generated by the 'primitive' brain — areas like the brain stem and the amygdala, which is in the limbic system — with the stream of conscious thought". And it is one of the few cortical regions noticeably bigger in humans than other primates. As Lehrer concludes, Plato and Freud were wrong, "Homo sapiens is the most emotional animal of all".
How well this can work is illustrated with a case from the Iraq war, when a radar operator on a British destroyer decides to shoot down a blip on his radar screen heading for an American battleship. It could have been an Iraqi missile, or an American jet; no rational analysis at that time could determine which, yet something about the blip filled him with cold, dreadful fear, although he couldn't explain what. It was travelling at 550 miles an hour, and he had 40 seconds to decide what to do. He fired his ship's missiles, and they brought down the Silkworm just short of the American battleship. He still didn't know why, and it was only years after that intense analysis showed that the missiles appeared on the radar screen a little later than American jets: the radar man's emotions knew this, but his conscious mind didn't.
Lehrer explains how experts develop their expertise by training the emotional system - they practice and practice, which produce learned patterns of dopamine release in a part of the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Then, if something deviates from the pattern, the ACC sends an immediate signal to the hypothalmus. In serious cases that produces what we know as the fight or flight response - pure "gut feeling" or emotion.
Article comments
1 - Tony
I just heard the author interviewed on ABC radio (RN)- ie Australian Broadcasting Corporation- Sound like a great book.