EDUCATION & TRAINING
The Neuroscientist Who Proved That Pure Reason Can't Make Decisions — and What That Means for AI
Dev.to Machine Learning
About This Tutorial
In the early 1990s, António Damasio had a patient named Elliot. Elliot was intelligent. His IQ was intact. His memory was fine. He could analyze situations clearly and articulate arguments fluently. By every standard cognitive measure, nothing was wrong. But Elliot couldn't decide what to eat for lunch. A surgical procedure had damaged the connection between his prefrontal cortex and the brain's emotional and body-state signaling systems. The rational machinery worked perfectly.