Presented by Ronald Bonstetter, PhD; Thomas Collura, PhD: While neuroscience and mental health professionals acknowledge the role of emotions in decision-making, application of this knowledge is hampered by the lack of a common language and a model that illustrates the potential neurological pathways. By better understanding the brain’s decision-making process and the role of emotions in those decisions, we can begin to expose the moment by moment dynamics of human behaviors and the role played by pre-cognitive thoughts. Armed with this knowledge, we may be able to help individuals recognize and reflect on decisions in a more logical manner. This presentation will offer insights into how humans react to personal triggers in a conversation, thus, exposing underlying precognitive beliefs and related emotions that ultimately lead to our behaviors and decisions. We will highlight the protocols used to generate these modified event-related potentials with a focus on gamma frontal lobe asymmetry as well exposing the asymmetry of Brodmann’s areas 9 and 10 as primary emotional processing areas and Brodmann’s areas 44 and 45 as secondary emotional processing resource. Changes in these Brodmann areas, as a participant processes a new stimulus, will be presented using quantitative analysis and will serve as validation of the resulting parallel sLORETA visual maps.
The ultimate takeaway from this presentation is the creation of a model that illustrates the potential neurological pathways and produces a minimal model that attempts to account for the emotional states and decision processes. When the transitions are viewed in a particular format that accentuates the contributions of the targeted brain locations, a digital code emerges. When a left or right sensory or perceptual area becomes active, then the corresponding portions of the activation model are considered to have a role in the current processing. In addition, the spontaneous categorization of inputs that the model associates with this processing is an example of an adaptive process that exposes an essential survival mechanism that is part of our evolution as a species.
Administering these protocols in real world contexts, such as during coaching sessions, job interviews, and possibly even in psychotherapeutic milieus (given proper ethical constraints), are promising areas for additional study and promise to impact and potentially expose hidden decision-making mechanisms of the preconscious mind.
