Emotion and Reason The Cognitive Neuroscience of Decision Making

by Berthoz, Alain; Weiss, Giselle

• ISBN13: 9780198566267
• ISBN10: 0198566263
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-08-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Decision making is an area of profound importance to a wide range of specialties - for psychologists, economists, lawyers, clinicians, managers, and of course philosophers. Only relatively recently, though, have we begun to really understand how decision making processes are implemented in the brain, and how they might interact with our emotions. Emotion and Reason presents a groundbreaking new approach to understanding decision making processes and their neural bases. The book presents a sweeping survey of the science of decision making. It examines the brain mechanisms involved in making decisions, and controversially proposes that many of our perceptual actions are essentially decision making processes. Whether looking, listening, hearing, or moving, we choose to attend to certain stimuli, at the expense of others. In some psychiatric disorders the inability to respond selectively to certain stimuli can be harmful - such pathologies of decision making are additionally considered. Berthoz also considers how many decision making processes involve an internal dialogue with our other self, and how this dialogue with our 'doppelganger' might be represented in the brain. He considers the important implications that a neuroscience of decision making can have for the judiciary - how we apportion blame and responsibility, for economics - with discussion of the growing field of neuroeconomics; and for theories of management. Lastly he examines decision making and creativity - if perception relies in part on decision making processes, how might this alter our view of the artistic process? Written by a neuroscientist of international fame and accessible for both scientists and non-scientists, this book is the most exhaustive examination of the science of decision making yet. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Introduction	ix
Part 1 Is decision making rational or irrational?
The brain---gambler and logician	3	(20)
Decision making and emotion	23	(28)
The pathology of decision making	51	(22)
Part 2 Decision making with my second self
Fight or flight	73	(22)
Walking and balance	95	(14)
Deliberating with one's body: me and my second self	109	(28)
Part 3 Perception, preference, and decision making
To perceive visually is to decide: the physiology of doubt	137	(18)
Decision making and shape recognition: ambiguity and rivalry	155	(18)
Sensory conflict: perception of movement	173	(12)
Fountains	185	(14)
Part 4 Magical thinking
The physiology of preference	199	(34)
`I think, therefore I suppress'	233	(18)
The brain as emulator and generator of strategies: the vagabond thought	251	(28)
Epilogue	279	(6)
Picture credits	285	(4)
Index	289