By
Jyotirmaya S.
D. Litt. Candidate
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS, BERHAMPUR UNIVERSITY, INDIA
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PROLOGUE
New brain imaging technologies have motivated neuromanagement studies of the internal order of the mind and its links with the spectrum of human decisions from choice among fixed gambles to choice mediated by market and other institutional rules. We are only at the beginning of the enterprise, but its promise suggests a fundamental change in how we think, observe and model decision in all its contexts. …….. Vernon Smith Nobel Laureate (Managements, 2002)
Everyday life is full of decisions and choices. An important question for many researchers is how people make (management) decisions. Specifically, researchers are interested in the assumptions, beliefs, habits, and tactics that people use to make everyday decisions. Research suggests that the brain considers various sources of information before making a decision. However, how does it do this? In addition, why does the process sometimes go awry, causing us to make impulsive, indecisive, and confused decisions; the kinds that can lead to risky and potentially dangerous behaviours? Human behaviour is not the product of a single process, but rather reflects the interaction of different specialized subsystems. These systems, the idea goes, usually interact seamlessly to determine behaviour, but at times, they compete. Result is that brain sometimes argues with itself, as these distinct systems come to different conclusions about what we should do. Human behaviour, in general, is not under constant and detailed control of careful and accurate hedonic calculations, but is product of an unstable and irrational complex of reflex actions,
References: Glimcher, P.W. and Rustichini, A. (2004) Neuro - management decision making: consilience of brain and decision. Science 306, 447–452 Camerer, C Glimcher, P.W. (2003) Decisions, Uncertainty, and the Brain: The Science of Neuro - management decision making, MIT Press Von Neumann, J Olds, J. (1977) Drives and Reinforcements: Behavioural Studies of Hypothalamic Function, Raven Press Colle, L.M Tobler, P.N. et al. (2005) Adaptive coding of reward value by dopamine neurons. Science 307, 1642–1645 Tremblay, L Roesch, M.R. and Olson, C.R. (2004) Neuronal activity related to reward value and motivation in primate frontal cortex. Science 304, 307–310 Cromwell, H.C McCoy, A.N. et al. (2003) Saccade reward signals in posterior cingulate cortex. Neuron 40, 1031–1040 Knutson, B O’Doherty, J. et al. (2001) Abstract reward and punishment representations in the human orbitofrontal cortex. Nat. Neurosci. 4, 95–102 Delgado, M.R Elliott, R. et al. (2003) Differential response patterns in the striatum and orbitofrontal cortex to financial reward in humans: a parametric functional magnetic resonance imaging study. J. Neurosci. 23, 303–307 Kringelbach, M.L. et al. (2003) Activation of human orbitofrontal cortex to a liquid food stimulus is correlated with its subjective pleasantness. Cereb. Cortex 13, 1064–1071 Rilling, J.K Mark, T.A. and Gallistel, C.R. (1993) Subjective reward magnitude of medial forebrain stimulation as a function of train duration and pulse frequency. Behav. Neursci. 107, 389–401 Montague, P.R Braver, T.S. and Cohen, J.D. (2000) On the control of control: the role of dopamine in regulating prefrontal function and workingmemory. In Attention and Performance (Monsell, S. and Driver, J., eds), pp. 713–737, Academic Press Aston-Jones, G Yu, A.J. and Dayan, P. (2005) Uncertainty, neuromodulation, and attention. Neuron 46, 681–692 Merlo, A Falkenstein, M. et al. (1995) Event related potential correlates of errors in reaction tasks. In Perspectives of Event-Related Potentials Research (Karmos, G. et al., eds), pp. 287–296, Elsevier Carter, C.S Holroyd, C.B. and Coles, M.G. (2002) The neural basis of human error processing: reinforcement learning, dopamine, and the error-related negativity. Psychol. Rev. 109, 679–709 Miltner, W.H Peyron, R. et al. (2000) Functional imaging of brain responses to pain. A review and meta-analysis. Clin. Neurophysiol. 30, 263–288 Gehring, W.J Yeung, N. and Sanfey, A.G. (2004) Independent coding of reward magnitude and valence in the human brain. J. Neurosci. 24, 6258–6264 Kahneman, D Breiter, H.C. et al. (2001) Functional imaging of neural responses to expectancy and experience of monetary gains and losses. Neuron 30, 619–639 Holroyd, C.B Knutson, B. et al. (2005) Distributed neural representation of expected value. J. Neurosci. 25, 4806–4812 Berns, G.S Schall, J.D. (2001) Neural basis of deciding, choosing and acting. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 2, 33–42 Shadlen, M.N Roitman, J.D. and Shadlen, M.N. (2002) Response of neurons in the lateral intraparietal area during a combined visual discrimination reaction time task. J. Neurosci. 22, 9475–9489 Sugrue, L.P Gold, J.I. and Shadlen, M.N. (2001) Neural computations that underlie decisions about sensory stimuli. Trends Cogn. Sci. 5, 10–16 Brown, E.T