Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex

Somatic Markers and Decision Making: How Your Body Makes Choices Your Conscious Mind Can’t The somatic marker hypothesis is the framework — first articulated by António Damásio — in which an anticipatory body-loop signal generated in the amygdala and integrated by the ventromedial prefrontal cortex biases decision-making before conscious reasoning catches up. Without that signal, choices may stay computationally rational while drifting away from a person’s actual interests. ...

Why Sleep-Deprived Professionals Make Terrible Decisions (And Don’t Realize It) Lack of sleep and decision making collapse together because sleep loss decouples the ventromedial prefrontal cortex — the brain region that integrates emotion with rational analysis — from the amygdala, while the orexin compensatory wake-drive masks the impairment. Confidence rises as judgment quietly fails, and the mismatch never registers in conscious awareness. ...