title: Spiking Phineas Gage: a neurocomputational theory of cognitive-affective integration in decision making.
abstract: The authors present a neurological theory of how cognitive information and emotional information are integrated in the nucleus accumbens during effective decision making. They describe how the nucleus accumbens acts as a gateway to integrate cognitive information from the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus with emotional information from the amygdala. The authors have modeled this integration by a network of spiking artificial neurons organized into separate areas and used this computational model to simulate 2 kinds of cognitive-affective integration. The model simulates successful performance by people with normal cognitive-affective integration. The model also simulates the historical case of Phineas Gage as well as subsequent patients whose ability to make decisions became impeded by damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada. bmwagar@uwaterloo.ca
authors.forename: Brandon M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Wagar
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Thagard
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology; D009430:Neural Analyzers / Q000502:physiology; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D009714:Nucleus Accumbens / Q000502:physiology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology*; D017557:Ventral Tegmental Area / Q000502:physiology