What's really behind your decisions?

Above: Ming Hsu, according to LASNews, one of the pioneers in a growing field called NeuroEconomics. Picture courtesy: Illinois Today.

One thing that I love about the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, my Alma Mater, is the loads of Alumni publications that I recieved from the land-grant university, established in 1869. One of them comes from the college that my major (Integrative Biology) belongs to, called LASNews (LAS = Liberal Arts and Sciences). In it are loads of articles with updates on how the school is doing, what research is going on from the various fields in the college, and not to mention, the classic requests for giving back to the Alma Mater.

The front cover of this semester's magazine had a picture of a brain CT scan, with a stash of cash superimposed on it. The headliner goes something like this:

"Money on the Brain: THERE'S A LOGICAL DECISION WHY WE SOMETIMES MAKE IRRATIONAL DECISIONS - ITS HOW WE ARE WIRED."

Economics, to me, is quite an interesting subject, as it can be related to every single day of our lives. Why? At least in high school, I learned that the field has a lot to do with how we consider the benefits and costs of decisions in order to make them. Ming Hsu, as featured in this article took this decision making further: looking at how different parts of our brain contribute to that decision making.

As medical students: our dip into neurology involves which parts of the brain affect different aspects of how our body is regulated, everything from the involuntary (breathing, heart rate, sensation) to the voluntary (movement of our limbs). However, most of the neuropsychology research that I did in undergrad really didn't make the cut toward the medical curriculum.

The brain is one of the most perplexing things known to man. We know already that there are centers for many of our different brain functions, such as the amygdala for our emotions, our hippocampus for creating new memories (go rent Memento, one of the most realistic examples of amnesia on the big screen), and the hypothalamus, which regulates many of the processes that go on within our bodies without us even knowing it. Even broader areas of the brain have been loosely defined, such as the left side, for most of us, the center of calculation, while the right side of the brain has been shown for more abstract, artsy thought.

Through a use of various neuroimaging technologies (where basically the brain lights up as different colors depending on how active each part is) and putting people through standardized decision making (such as the reknowned economics ultimatum game), Hsu can see how different areas of the brain contribute to our daily tasks of making decisions. By combining economics, neuroscience, and psychology, he has become a pioneer in a new field called neuroeconomics.

I'd love to see what conclusions Hsu has... maybe finally after some type of traumatic event or neurodegenerative disease we can have a better idea how decision making may be affected. We know that some diseases affect specific areas of the brain. Who knows, perhaps it will be more comforting to the families of brain trauma patients, if clinicians could give them a better idea of what types of cognitive challenges their loved one may face. They would know when the decision was considered appropriately and when exactly to assist in making appropriate decisions, allowing the patient a degree of independence & confidence (instead of thinking that every moment their loved one was incapable of making decisions for themselves).

With a little predictability due to neuroeconomics, us clinicians could make life a little less frustrating for patients and their families.

Source: LASNews Magazine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.