Emotion, decision-making and the brain

2008 ◽  
pp. 31-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke J. Chang ◽  
Alan G. Sanfey
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
The Brain

Neuroscience: The New English Major?

2021 ◽  
pp. 107385842110039
Author(s):  
Kristin F. Phillips ◽  
Harald Sontheimer
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Graduate Education ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Undergraduate Curriculum ◽  
Virginia Tech ◽  
Bachelor's Degree ◽  
State University ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
English Major ◽  
The Brain

Once strictly the domain of medical and graduate education, neuroscience has made its way into the undergraduate curriculum with over 230 colleges and universities now offering a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience. The disciplinary focus on the brain teaches students to apply science to the understanding of human behavior, human interactions, sensation, emotions, and decision making. In this article, we encourage new and existing undergraduate neuroscience programs to envision neuroscience as a broad discipline with the potential to develop competencies suitable for a variety of careers that reach well beyond research and medicine. This article describes our philosophy and illustrates a broad-based undergraduate degree in neuroscience implemented at a major state university, Virginia Tech. We highlight the fact that the research-centered Experimental Neuroscience major is least popular of our four distinct majors, which underscores our philosophy that undergraduate neuroscience can cater to a different audience than traditionally thought.

scholarly journals Consciousness, decision making, and volition: freedom beyond chance and necessity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Liljenström
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Brain Structures ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Neural Information ◽  
Neural Information Processing ◽  
Stochastic Population Model ◽  
The Brain

AbstractWhat is the role of consciousness in volition and decision-making? Are our actions fully determined by brain activity preceding our decisions to act, or can consciousness instead affect the brain activity leading to action? This has been much debated in philosophy, but also in science since the famous experiments by Libet in the 1980s, where the current most common interpretation is that conscious free will is an illusion. It seems that the brain knows, up to several seconds in advance what “you” decide to do. These studies have, however, been criticized, and alternative interpretations of the experiments can be given, some of which are discussed in this paper. In an attempt to elucidate the processes involved in decision-making (DM), as an essential part of volition, we have developed a computational model of relevant brain structures and their neurodynamics. While DM is a complex process, we have particularly focused on the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) for its emotional, and the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) for its cognitive aspects. In this paper, we present a stochastic population model representing the neural information processing of DM. Simulation results seem to confirm the notion that if decisions have to be made fast, emotional processes and aspects dominate, while rational processes are more time consuming and may result in a delayed decision. Finally, some limitations of current science and computational modeling will be discussed, hinting at a future development of science, where consciousness and free will may add to chance and necessity as explanation for what happens in the world.

scholarly journals Motivational system modulates brain responses during exploratory decision-making

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chia-Wei Li ◽  
Carol Yeh-Yun Lin ◽  
Ting-Ting Chang ◽  
Nai-Shing Yen ◽  
Danchi Tan
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Behavioral Activation ◽  
Motivational Orientation ◽  
Performance Group ◽  
Reward Seeking ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Low Performance ◽  
Risk Choice ◽  
The Brain

AbstractManagers face risk in explorative decision-making and those who are better at such decisions can achieve future viability. To understand what makes a manager effective at explorative decision-making requires an analysis of the manager’s motivational characteristics. The behavioral activation/inhibition system (BAS/BIS), fitting the motivational orientation of “approach” or “avoidance,” can affect individual decision-making. However, very little is known about the neural correlates of BAS/BIS orientation and their interrelationship with the mental activity during explorative decision-making. We conducted an fMRI study on 111 potential managers to investigate how the brain responses of explorative decision-making interact with BAS/BIS. Participants were separated into high- and low-performance groups based on the median exploration-score. The low-performance group showed significantly higher BAS than that of the high-performance group, and its BAS had significant negative association with neural networks related to reward-seeking during explorative decision-making. Moreover, the BIS of the low-performance group was negatively correlated with the activation of cerebral regions responding to risk-choice during explorative decision-making. Our finding showed that BAS/BIS was associated with the brain activation during explorative decision-making only in the low-performance group. This study contributed to the understanding of the micro-foundations of strategically relevant decision-making and has an implication for management development.

scholarly journals Social decision-making in the brain: Input-state-output modelling reveals patterns of effective connectivity underlying reciprocal choices

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 699-712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Shaw ◽  
Kristína Czekóová ◽  
Martin Gajdoš ◽  
Rostislav Staněk ◽  
Jiří Špalek ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Effective Connectivity ◽  
Input State ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Social Decision Making ◽  
The Brain

scholarly journals Brain-inspired model for decision-making in the selection of beneficial information patterns among signals received by an unpredictable information-development environment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alireza Asgari ◽  
yvan beauregard
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Development Environment ◽  
Brain Functions ◽  
Operational Costs ◽  
Industrial Operations ◽  
The Brain

With its diversification in products and services, today’s marketplace makes competition wildly dynamic and unpredictable for industries. In such an environment, daily operational decision-making has a vital role in producing value for products and services while avoiding the risk of loss and hazard to human health and safety. However, it makes a large portion of operational costs for industries. The main reason is that decision-making belongs to the operational tasks dominated by humans. The less involvement of humans, as a less controllable entity, in industrial operation could also favorable for improving workplace health and safety. To this end, artificial intelligence is proposed as an alternative to doing human decision-making tasks. Still, some of the functional characteristics of the brain that allow humans to make decisions in unpredictable environments like the current industry, especially knowledge generalization, are challenging for artificial intelligence. To find an applicable solution, we study the principles that underlie the human brain functions in decision-making. The relative base functions are realized to develop a model in a simulated unpredictable environment for a decision-making system that could decide which information is beneficial to choose. The method executed to build our model's neuronal interactions is unique that aims to mimic some simple functions of the brain in decision-making. It has the potential to develop for systems acting in the higher abstraction levels and complexities in real-world environments. This system and our study will help to integrate more artificial intelligence in industrial operations and settings. The more successful implementation of artificial intelligence will be the steeper decreasing operational costs and risks.

scholarly journals Flexible categorization in perceptual decision making

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Genís Prat-Ortega ◽  
Klaus Wimmer ◽  
Alex Roxin ◽  
Jaime de la Rocha
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Network Models ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Drift Diffusion ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Attractor Dynamics ◽  
Attractor Model ◽  
Winner Take All ◽  
The Brain

AbstractPerceptual decisions require the brain to make categorical choices based on accumulated sensory evidence. The underlying computations have been studied using either phenomenological drift diffusion models or neurobiological network models exhibiting winner-take-all attractor dynamics. Although both classes of models can account for a large body of experimental data, it remains unclear to what extent their dynamics are qualitatively equivalent. Here we show that, unlike the drift diffusion model, the attractor model can operate in different integration regimes: an increase in the stimulus fluctuations or the stimulus duration promotes transitions between decision-states leading to a crossover between weighting mostly early evidence (primacy regime) to weighting late evidence (recency regime). Between these two limiting cases, we found a novel regime, which we name flexible categorization, in which fluctuations are strong enough to reverse initial categorizations, but only if they are incorrect. This asymmetry in the reversing probability results in a non-monotonic psychometric curve, a novel and distinctive feature of the attractor model. Finally, we show psychophysical evidence for the crossover between integration regimes predicted by the attractor model and for the relevance of this new regime. Our findings point to correcting transitions as an important yet overlooked feature of perceptual decision making.

scholarly journals Distributed context-dependent choice information in mouse dorsal-parietal cortex

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Orlandi ◽  
Mohammad Adbolrahmani ◽  
Ryo Aoki ◽  
Dmitry Lyamzin ◽  
Andrea Benucci
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Variable ◽  
Visual Stream ◽  
Posterior Cortex ◽  
Neural Data ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
Cortical Regions ◽  
Low Dimensional ◽  
Independent Decision ◽  
The Brain

Abstract Choice information appears in the brain as distributed signals with top-down and bottom-up components that together support decision-making computations. In sensory and associative cortical regions, the presence of choice signals, their strength, and area specificity are known to be elusive and changeable, limiting a cohesive understanding of their computational significance. In this study, examining the mesoscale activity in mouse posterior cortex during a complex visual discrimination task, we found that broadly distributed choice signals defined a decision variable in a low-dimensional embedding space of multi-area activations, particularly along the ventral visual stream. The subspace they defined was near-orthogonal to concurrently represented sensory and motor-related activations, and it was modulated by task difficulty and contextually by the animals’ attention state. To mechanistically relate choice representations to decision-making computations, we trained recurrent neural networks with the animals’ choices and found an equivalent decision variable whose context-dependent dynamics agreed with that of the neural data. In conclusion, our results demonstrated an independent decision variable broadly represented in the posterior cortex, controlled by task features and cognitive demands. Its dynamics reflected decision computations, possibly linked to context-dependent feedback signals used for probabilistic-inference computations in variable animal-environment interactions.

scholarly journals A Role for Emotional Granularity in Judging

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (9(5)) ◽  
pp. 557-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Gendron ◽  
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Judicial Decision ◽  
Judicial Decision Making ◽  
Classical View ◽  
Empirically Supported ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Toma De Decisiones ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Emotions are traditionally viewed as detrimental to judicial responsibility, a belief rooted in the classical view of the mind as a battle ground between reason and emotion. Drawing on recent developments in psychology and neuroscience we propose that the brain uses past experience, organized as concepts, to guide actions and give sensations meaning, constructing experiences such as “fear” or “anger”. Wisdom comes from skill at constructing emotions in a more precise and functional way, a skill called “emotional granularity”. Studies show that individuals who are more emotionally granular have better function across a range of domains, including self regulation and decision making. We propose that effective judicial decision-making does not require a dispassionate judge, but a judge who is high in emotional granularity. We lay out an empirical agenda for testing this idea and end by discussing empirically supported recommendations for increasing emotional granularity in the judiciary. Tradicionalmente, se ha considerado que las emociones son perjudiciales para el desempeño responsable de la labor judicial, una creencia enraizada en la concepción clásica de la mente como campo de batalla entre razón y emoción. Partiendo de nuevos descubrimientos en psicología y neurociencia, argumentamos que el cerebro usa la experiencia pasada, organizada como conceptos, para guiar las acciones y dar sentido a las sensaciones, construyendo experiencias como “miedo” o “ira”. La sabiduría proviene de la habilidad en construir emociones de un modo más preciso y funcional, habilidad denominada “granularidad emocional”. Los estudios muestran que los individuos más granulares emocionalmente funcionan mejor en varios dominios, incluyendo la autorregulación y la toma de decisiones. Argumentamos que la toma de decisiones eficaz en judicatura no requiere de un juez desapasionado, sino de un juez que tenga alta granularidad emocional. Proponemos un programa empírico para poner a prueba esa idea, y concluimos con un debate de recomendaciones de base empírica para aumentar la granularidad emocional en la judicatura.

scholarly journals EMPOWERMENT TRAINING IMPACT OF PORNOGRAPHY THROUGH INTERNET IN KELURAHAN MAPHAR, JAKARTA BARAT

ICCD ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-140
Author(s):  
Inge Hutagalung
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Community Development ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Learning Ability ◽  
Sexually Active ◽  
Unwanted Pregnancies ◽  
Pornography Addiction ◽  
Training Impact ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Brain

Pornography causes damage to the five parts of the brain, especially in the pre frontal cortex (the right part of the brain behind the forehead of logic brain). Consequently the part of the brain responsible for logic will be deformed due to unfiltered hyper stimulation (the brain only seeks pleasure without consequence). In addition, the most worrying impact is a decrease in academic achievement and learning ability, as well as a reduced decision-making ability. Furthermore, an increasing number of active sexually active adolescents will also increase the case of unwanted pregnancies, and abortion actions that are often regarded as a solution to the problem. Through community development activities are expected to be able to contribute in the form of data and information related to the level of pornography addiction that is rife among teenagers. From the understanding that is formed, it is hoped that it can become a material consideration for policy making related to the prevention and handling of pornography among teenagers in Indonesia.

scholarly journals Neuroscience: alloy for early childhood education

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-32
Author(s):  
Juana Maricela Quintana Loor ◽  
Jessica Lourdes Arteaga Mera ◽  
Luz Adriana Corrales Moreno ◽  
Josefa Katiuska Toala Palma ◽  
Lubis Carmita Zambrano Montes
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
The Brain

It is intended to carry out a tour about the influence of neuroscience in early childhood education. It is important that all teachers, especially those working with infants, can know the fundamental principles of neuroscience and how the brain learns; thus have sufficient resources for decision making in school classrooms. This research paper attempts to make an introduction about the topic to be addressed and its focus on early childhood education.

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