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Social Decision-Making: Insights from Game Theory and Neuroscience - 0 views

www.sciencemag.org/...598

decision-making neuroscience cogsci

shared by Rudy Garns on 25 Jan 09 - Cached

Rudy Garns on 25 Jan 09

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

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">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</div>

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"No evidence of Human Mirror Neurons" - 0 views

cognitionandculture.net/index.php

mirror-neurons

shared by Rudy Garns on 12 Nov 08 - Cached

Rudy Garns on 12 Nov 08

"Social scientists are often concerned about the importation of poorly understood concepts from the hard sciences into "softer" fields like anthropology or sociology. In my view, the story of mirror neurons shows that the reverse also happens: scores of brilliant neuroscientists were set to work on entities celebrated and, one might say, partly invented because they allowed neuroscience to relate to social concepts, like imitation, culture, and art. Once it got started, the story was one of mutual seduction. The disenchantment, if it takes place at all, may take years. Will the speculative bubble burst? "

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">"Social scientists are often concerned about the importation of poorly understood concepts from the hard sciences into "softer" fields like anthropology or sociology. In my view, the story of mirror neurons shows that the reverse also happens: scores of brilliant neuroscientists were set to work on entities celebrated and, one might say, partly invented because they allowed neuroscience to relate to social concepts, like imitation, culture, and art. Once it got started, the story was one of mutual seduction. The disenchantment, if it takes place at all, may take years. Will the speculative bubble burst? "</div>

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Saxelab Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at MIT - 0 views

saxelab.mit.edu/publications.php

cognitive-science neuroethics social-neuroscience cogsci

shared by Rudy Garns on 28 Jan 09 - Cached

Rudy Garns on 28 Jan 09

publication

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">publication</div>

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Study Finds Brain Injury Changes Moral Judgment - New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...21cnd-brain.html

brain ethics morality neuroethics neuroscience

shared by Rudy Garns on 22 Mar 07 - Cached

native revulsion
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ventromedial prefrontal cortex
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active during moral decision-making
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...17 more annotations...
a very specific kind of emotion-based judgment is altered when the region is offline
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emotional system
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utilitarian cost-benefit analyses
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ventromedial area
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ventromedial area
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blind to subtle social cues, making them socially awkward
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strongly rejected doing harm to others in situations that were not a matter of trading one certain death for another.
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direct action to kill or harm someone
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Those with ventromedial injuries were about twice as likely as the other participants to say they would push someone in front of the train
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navigate social interactions
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brain stem
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amygdala
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emotional memories,
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social emotions that we can feel, like embarrassment, guilt, compassion that are critical to guiding our social behavior,
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ension between cost-benefit calculations and instinctive emotion
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ancient principle: respect for the life of another human being
- Rudy Garns on 22 Mar 07
  
  It would be interesting to see whether other primates use the ventromedial cortex for similar responses to dilemmas involving conspecifics.
  
  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">It would be interesting to see whether other primates use the ventromedial cortex for similar responses to dilemmas involving conspecifics.</div>
  
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increased willingness to kill or harm another person if doing so would save others' lives
- Rudy Garns on 22 Mar 07
  
  I wonder what would happen if you adjust the identity of the sacrificable person. What happens if person is a stranger versus a family member? They do run the "smother your baby" dilemma. Does it make a difference if it is a stranger? What about alternative to the other five victims? What information is the VMPFC working with?
  
  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">I wonder what would happen if you adjust the identity of the sacrificable person. What happens if person is a stranger versus a family member? They do run the "smother your baby" dilemma. Does it make a difference if it is a stranger? What about alternative to the other five victims? What information is the VMPFC working with?</div>
  
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Mixing Memory : Emotion, Reason, and Moral Judgment - 0 views

scienceblogs.com/...study_on_emotion_reason_an.php

morality neuroethics neuroscience

shared by Rudy Garns on 02 Apr 08 - Cached

emotion and intuition, both of which operate automatically and unconsciously for the most part, play a much larger role than most philosophers and psychologists had previously been willing to admit.
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VMPC plays a role in encoding the reward value of stimuli, as well as emotions like fear.
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determines approach and avoidance behavior.
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patients with damage to the VMPC, who have trouble processing emotional value as a result of that damage, would behave differently in those scenarios than normal individuals (and other brain-damaged patients
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The standard interpretation of these results is that in the impersonal scenarios, people are making the moral decision using conscious reasoning. Specifically, they are thought to be using utilitarian ethical principles to make the decision to flip the switch and kill one person to save five. In the personal scenarios, however, people tend not to make utilitarian decisions, and researchers therefore believe that they are basing their decision on the emotional response the situation elicits.
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damage to the VMPC can make decisions related to the value of a stimulus more difficult
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there was a difference between the normal patients (and brain-damaged elsewhere patients) and the VMPC-damaged patients for the high-conflict personal moral scenarios. The normal and non-VMPC brain-damaged patients said "no" (they wouldn't smother the baby, e.g.) about 80% of the time in response to these scenarios, while the VMPC-damaged patients said no less than 60% of the time (in fact, their response rate was pretty close to 50-50).
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more rational
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they just didn't know how to respond to those scenarios
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unable to decide
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when people are making these decisions, both the emotional reaction and the moral principle are available at the same time, and one will win out over the other, depending largely on the strength of the emotional response (which is strong in the personal scenarios, and weak in the impersonal ones, at least when they're just being read on paper). This would be inconsistent with strong intuitionist theories of moral judgment.
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Rudy Garns on 02 Apr 08

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.

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">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.</div>

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Anterior cingulate cortex regulation of sympathetic activity -- Luu and Posner 126 (10)... - 0 views

brain.oxfordjournals.org/...2119

anterior.cingulate brain neuroscience