Decision-making requires both analysis and emotion
(HealthDay News) – Move over, Mr. Spock.
The always logical Vulcan Star Trek officer often claimed that emotions got in the way of good decision-making.
But at least one study has found that it takes both logic and emotional involvement to come up with a good choice, from where to have dinner to when to change jobs.
Emotions are critical in helping us make everyday, personal decisions," says Dr. Dean Shibata, author of the study presented a few years ago to members of the Radiological Society of North America.
Brain scans of 11 healthy adults shows the part of the brain that records emotions was much more active when decisions affected the subjects personally than when the decisions had little impact on their lives.
"There was a clear dichotomy. The ventromedial frontal lobe was much more active in personal as opposed to objective decision-making," says Shibata, associate professor of radiology at the University of Washington in Seattle .
The study involved six women and five men who were asked a series of questions designed to elicit either emotional or objective responses. One emotional question, for instance, was whether you would rather have a camera or a bicycle. Then, to elicit an objective response, participants were asked which costs more, a camera or a bicycle.
"The questions were as close as possible, but different. One was about desire and the other about cost," Shibata says.
A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine showed high activity in the ventromedial frontal lobe -- the part of the brain typically involved in emotions -- when participants were making their choice. Activity in the same brain section was minimal when they were figuring out the cost. The magnetic scanning technique highlights blood flow and oxygen use in the brain.
"When we make a [personal] decision, we get in our brain an emotional image of the outcome of that decision," like imagining sloppy work if we don't sharpen a pencil, Shibata says.
Without that imaging, Shibata says it appears very difficult to make the decision about something that directly affects us.
Shibata says his findings corroborate other recent research that shows emotional and analytical thinking are closely intertwined in personal decision-making.
For instance, he says, other research indicates that people with injury to the ventromedial front lobe through stroke or tumors have a very difficult time making the simplest decisions about themselves, like scheduling a doctor's appointment.
"You can give them a psychological test, and they will do quite well. Their intelligence and memory are intact, but they have a striking inability to narrow down the possibilities. In the absence of emotional drive, they don't have the basis to make a decision [about themselves]," he says.
Shibata says he hopes continuing research in this area eventually will have clinical use in treating diseases like schizophrenia.
"As we understand more about how the normal brain works and how emotions are processed, we can understand what's different about the brains of schizophrenics. Then we can use the information to better intervene," he says.
On the Web
The Howard Howard Hughes Medical Institute has a good description as to how the brain works and how illusions can be so effective.
SOURCES:
Dean K. Shibata, M.D., associate professor of radiology, University of Washington, Seattle; Nov. 26, 2001, annual meeting of Radiological Society of North America, Chicago
Author:
Janice Billingsley, HealthDay Reporter
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