Decision-making
Decision-making can be defined as the process of choosing an option or course of action from a set of alternatives.
There is a long history of decision-making research in psychology, economics, and philosophy. About 10 years ago neurobiologists began to investigate neural mechanisms of perceptual decision-making in the primate brain. Only very recently neuroscientists teamed up with psychologists and economists to investigate decision-making processes in a more comprehensive fashion; thus the still nascent field of neuroeconomics emerged.
Similarly, decision-making has long been a central topic in philosophy, especially in the context of volition, action theory and moral behavior. Recently, these questions became even more important because it turned out that some of the most intricate ethical problems have action theoretical underpinings. However, only recently neuroscientists have joined forces with philosophers and thereby created the new fields of neurophilosophy and neuroethics.
A more comprehensive understanding of how we make decisions will contribute to a better understanding of disorders of this function in clinical populations, such as patients with brain lesions, drug and alcohol addiction, pathological gambling, schizophrenia and impulsive-aggressive behavior. Starting from basic technology available today and progressively evolving over the next 5-10 years, brain-computer interfaces for handicapped subjects, e.g., tetraplegic patients, will directly map brain decision making for motor actions and translate it into instrumental support, calling for a commensurate physiological and philosophical understanding of responsible agency in case of hybrid man-machine actions.
Decision-making research in Berlin covers a broad range of different aspects of decision-making: from studies on mechanisms of perceptual decision-making, over conflict and heuristics to motivation, volition and moral-decision-making.
Key publications on this topic:
Blankertz B., Dornhege G., Schafer C., Krepki R., Kohlmorgen J., Mueller K.R., Kunzmann V., Losch F., Curio G. (2003)
Boosting bit rates and error detection for the classification of fast-paced motor commands based on single-trial EEG analysis.
IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 11:127-31.
Gigerenzer G., Todd P. M., the ABC Group (1999)
Simple heuristics that make us smart. New York: Oxford University Press.
Heekeren H.R., Marrett S., Bandettini P.A., Ungerleider L.G. (2004)
A general mechanism for perceptual decision-making in the human brain.
Nature 431 (7010):859-861.
Heinz A., Braus D.F., Smolka M.N., Wrase J., Puls I., Hermann D., Klein S., Gruesser S.M., Flor H., Schumann G., Mann K., Buechel C. (2005)
Amygdala-prefrontal coupling depends on a genetic variation of the serotonin transporter. Nature Neuroscience 8:20-1.
Hohlfeld A., Sangals J., Sommer W. (2004)
Effects of additional tasks on language perception: An ERP investigation.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory,, Cognition 30:1012-1025.
Lettau M., Uhlig H. (1999)
Rules of Thumb versus Dynamic Programming, with Martin Lettau. American Economic Review, vol. 89, no. 148-174
Pauen M. (2007)
Freiheit – Natur – Vernunft. Rationale Gründe und selbstbestimmte Entscheidungen in einer naturgesetzlich bestimmten Welt. in Konrad Paul Liessmann (ed.), Die Freiheit des Denkens. Philosophicum Lech. Wien
Pauen M. (2003)
Does Free Will Arise Freely. Scientific American. Special Edition: Mind.
Schooler L. J., Hertwig R. (2005)
How forgetting aids heuristic inference. Psychological Review 112:610–628.
Stoecker R. (2001)
How individual are intentional states really? Language, Communication 21:167-175
