Somatic Marking Theory

Somatic marking, or the somatic marking hypothesis, is the theory that emotional reactions get "marked" in the brain. What this means is that when you engage in a situation, the outcome and feelings and emotions you felt get instinctively remembered by the somatosensory areas in the brain, and are recalled when we sense that a similar situation is about to unfold, like the one that we have previous experience dealing with. It could be said that somatic marking is much like the schema in their principles. It would help us survive by giving us an instinctive push to act in a certain way when we think a situation is going down a road in which we have been down before and which the outcome was negative, from a feeling and emotional perspective. Somatic marking takes place in the somatic marker areas in the brain, which are a few different areas which receive signals from all over the body to map the body state, and which are the basis for our feelings. We cannot be aware of the somatic marking, at least not at the time it is taking place. I hides in our thinking process to make it seem as though we organically came to a conclusion about something from logic and rational thought.