Decision making is an area of profound importance to a wide range of specialities - 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’ [by Alain Berthoz] 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.

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.

{ Oxford University Press | Continue reading | video: Conférence du 15 décembre 2008. Alain Berthoz: Emotion, raison et décision | watch/download }

photo { Christophe Kutner }

{ In Botvinick and Cohen’s experiment, an individual is seated with both hands resting parallel on a table with palms facing down. A partition is placed between one of their hands and their line of vision. Then, a fake rubber hand is placed on the other side of the screen. | Davidson.edu | Continue reading }