Tau.Neutrino said:
New insight into how brain neurons influence choices
When you are faced with a choice—say, whether to have ice cream or chocolate cake for dessert—sets of brain cells just above your eyes fire as you weigh your options. Animal studies have shown that each option activates a distinct set of neurons in the brain. The more enticing the offer, the faster the corresponding neurons fire.
more…
> The more enticing the offer, the faster the corresponding neurons fire.
Well, that’s a new insight for me.
> By changing the neurons’ activity, the researchers changed how appealing the monkeys found each option, leading the animals to make different choices.
That’s useful.
> In a number of mental and neuropsychiatric disorders, patients consistently make poor choices, but we don’t understand exactly why
A lot of people make poor choices.
> In the 18th century, economists Daniel Bernoulli, Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham suggested that people choose among options by computing the subjective value of each offer, taking into consideration factors such as quantity, quality, cost and the probability of actually receiving the promised offer. Once computed, values would be compared to make a decision. It took nearly three centuries to find the first concrete evidence of such calculations and comparisons in the brain. In 2006, Padoa-Schioppa and John Assad, Ph.D., a professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, published a groundbreaking paper in Nature describing the discovery of neurons that encode the subjective value offered and chosen goods. The neurons were found in the orbitofrontal cortex, an area of the brain just above the eyes involved in goal-directed behaviour.
Nice work. The section of the brain associated with high moral standards.