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During the development of the brain, young neurones need to form connections with other cells. But equally important, they need to avoid making connections with themselves.

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Your brain contains billions of nerve cells arranged in patterns that coordinate thought, emotion, behavior, movement and sensation. A complicated highway system of nerves connects your brain to the rest of your body, so communication can occur in split seconds. Think about how fast you pull your hand back from a hot stove. While all the parts of your brain work together, each part is responsible for a specific function - controlling everything from your heart rate to your mood.

Fellows 3 (3): 159 -- Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews

A major focus of our research is to examine the neurobiological underpinnings of category learning and attentional processes. We achieve this goal through a blending of empirical data collection, cognitive neuroscience, and mathematical modeling.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrative review of the area of Neuroscience and its relationship to Behavioral Decision Making. I will start by discussing Prospect theory and the role that neuroscience can play in understanding human behavior under risky situations. I will then discuss the Somatic Marker Hypothesis and its application in decision making. Further, I will highlight some techniques that are used to measure neural responses. Finally, I will end with future avenues of research where Neuroscience techniques can be applied in studying different Marketing phenomena.

This paper reviews the cognitive neuroscience of decision making and summarizes a talk given by the author at a SOL-UK workshop entitled 'Improving the Decision-Taking Process in Institutions' and held at the London School of Economics on 23rd June, 2006.\n\nAn operational definition of decision making is discussed as it relates to neuroscientific research and application. Neuroanatomical and cortico- subcortical as well as cortico-cortical connections between brain structures are then reviewed as they relate to the decision making process. Finally, while biased toward the individual level of analysis, extrapolations to the larger group environment are also discussed.

"Based on recent findings from neuroscience we can plausibly deduce that the mirror neurons of the viewer were engaged by these images of others suffering. The appeal was to the public's awakened sense of compassion and revulsion toward graphic depictions of the wholesale violence, barbarity, and torture routinely practiced on these Atlantic voyages. Rediker notes that the images would instantaneously "make the viewer identify and sympathize with the 'injured Africans' on the lower deck of the ship . . ." while also producing a sense of moral outrage (p. 315, Olson, 2008)."

"Now a recent breakthrough by the Cambridge neuroscientist and geneticist Seth Grant may provide a third possibility. In a report published in the June 2008 issue of Nature Neuroscience, Grant and his colleagues analyzed synapses in organisms of increasing evolutionary complexity, from single-celled organisms to vertebrates. They found that more advanced organisms also had more complex synapses, allowing neurons to communicate in more complicated ways." Seed

In a study published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience, UCLA neurology professor Paul Thompson and colleagues used a new type of brain-imaging scanner to show that intelligence is strongly influenced by the quality of the brain's axons, or wiring that sends signals throughout the brain. The faster the signaling, the faster the brain processes information. And since the integrity of the brain's wiring is influenced by genes, the genes we inherit play a far greater role in intelligence than was previously thought.

By combining the models and tasks of Game Theory with modern psychological and neuroscientific methods, the neuroeconomic approach to the study of social decision-making has the potential to extend our knowledge of brain mechanisms involved in social decisions and to advance theoretical models of how we make decisions in a rich, interactive environment. Research has already begun to illustrate how social exchange can act directly on the brain's reward system, how affective factors play an important role in bargaining and competitive games, and how the ability to assess another's intentions is related to strategic play. These findings provide a fruitful starting point for improved models of social decision-making, informed by the formal mathematical approach of economics and constrained by known neural mechanisms. -- Sanfey 318 (5850): 598 -- Science

Koenigs, M., Young, L., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Cushman, F., Hauser, M., & Damasion, A. (2007). Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements. Nature.