somatic marker hypothesis

Damasio’s somatic marker is an aid to decision making. The marker marks an experience a human has experienced with either a positive marker or a negative marker. When the human proceeds into a new experience, it recalls previous experiences to the new experience and decided wether the new experience would bring pleasure or pain. Domasio states that the somatic markers relate to the body in one way or another. An example Domasio gives of an unresponsive somatic marker would be the infant who suffered a brain injury through vehicular contact. When the infant grew to adolescence, she became rebellious towards her parents and acted wrongly in many social situations. The adolescent knows how to correctly act in social situations when asked, but cannot make the connection with previous somatic markers when in said situations. The somatic marker shares some similarities with the schema, as they both draw from prior situations to be used in future situations.