An investigation of the myopia for future consequences theory of VMF patient behaviour on the Iowa Gambling Task: An abstract neural network simulation

Somatic marker theory proposes that body states act as a valence associated with potential choices based on prior outcomes; and thus aid decision-making. The main supporting evidence for this theory arose from clinical interviews of subjects with ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMF) lesions and their performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). VMF patient behaviour has been described as myopia about future consequences. The aim of this paper is to investigate the implications of this description using an abstract simulation of the neural mechanisms that could underlie decision-making in this type of reinforcement learning task.