The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

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ArticleTitle	The orbitofrontal cortex and emotion
Language	J
AuthorList	Motoichiro Kato
Affiliation	Department of Neuropsychiatry, Tokyo Dental College Ichikawa General Hospital
Publication	Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 17 (2), 110-120, 2001
Received
Accepted
Abstract	The orbital and ventromedial regions of the prefrontal lobes have been considered to be the neural correlates for personality. In the neuropsychological research, the three theoretical frameworks, that is, somatic marker hypothesis, the theory bearing on the selection on the basis of reward value, and the explanation in relation to theory of mind, have been proposed to elucidate the function of the orbitofrontal cortex. In this study, we focused on the somatic marker hypothesis and gave our gambling tasks to an orbitofrontal damaged patient, a dorsolateral prefrontal damaged patient, and normal controls. The patient with circumscribed right orbitofrontal lesions selected more cards from bad decks than the right dorsolateral patient and controls, while this orbitofrontal patient had good performances on the memory tasks and the frontal tests such as WCST, word fluency, and modified Stroop test. These findings supported the clinical usefulness of gambling task and the somatic marker hypothesis.
Keywords	orbitofrontal cortex, emotion, decision making, somatic marker hypothesis, gambling task