The Human Brain: How We Decide

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The Human Brain: How We Decide.

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When Jonah Lehrer was in town to talk about his latest book, "How We Decide", Calacademy snagged the opportunity to interview him for "Science in Action".

He took the Visualization Studio through a tour of the brain as we make decisions whether in the cereal aisle or piloting a plane. Then the artists went to work, creating the brain visuals.

• http://www.calacademy.org/

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Jonah Lehrer is a Contributing Editor at Wired and the author of "How We Decide" and "Proust Was a Neuroscientist". Lehrer graduated from Columbia University and studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

He has written for The New Yorker, Nature, Seed, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. Lehrer is also a Contributing Editor at Scientific American Mind and National Public Radio's Radio Lab.

• http://www.jonahlehrer.com/
• http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/

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Since 1853, the California Academy of Sciences has been dedicated to exploring, explaining, and protecting the natural world. It is the only place in the world to combine an aquarium, natural history museum, and planetarium all under one living roof.

• http://www.calacademy.org/
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Category:

Education

Tags:

• human
• brain
• how
• we
• decide
• brains
• functions
• jonah
• lehrer
• neuro
• science
• neurons
• cognitive
• scientist
• university

[socint74]

The amygdala does not "generate emotions" It is a receptor of perceptions which initiates appropriate physiological changes enabling us to cope or benefit should we experience a disturbance of equilibrium when faced with threat or promise.

[PavelSTL]

@ClamCrunchy I believe you're underestimating the quantum effects on the brain functions. My previous reference to resonance was to illustrate an example of how noise is necessary for information transition.

[PavelSTL]

@ClamCrunchy I didn't say it was. My point is you can't have a GOOD deterministic model because you can't ignore quantum effects. I can also use Newton's model to describe Big Bang, but it'll be a crappy model. QM not only prohibits you from precisely measuring initial conditions, but it also perturbs state transitions, and chaotic systems are very sensitive to that. So even in PRINCIPLE you can't give me a deterministic model that will WELL describe a chaotic system (e.g. brain)

[ClamCrunchy]

@PavelSTL Chaos is not indeterminism. A system can be in principle deterministic but choatic, like arithimetic sequences that have chaotic behavior. I would highly doubt that quantum effects in neurons would be enough to influence their behavior that much. I would agree that your behavior cannot be predicted in 5 years with better than chance accuracy, not due to indeterminism, but rather due to an inability to measure starting parameters with sufficent precision.

[PavelSTL]

@ClamCrunchy Actually those atoms are not too few in number. Noise, which is largely susceptible to quantum effects, is an integral part of information transmission between neurons (see stochastic resonance). So while my behavior is relatively stable short-term, there's no way you can predict - even in principle - what I'll do in 5 years. Just like with weather and any other chaotic system, there's simply no deterministic model that would give a good description of the brain.

[CanadianSwine]

@ClamCrunchy well his youtube channel is inmendham just type it in the search bar. It will show up. It is the video RE:::: Thunderf00t ...Free Will and Determinism posted 3 days ago.

[ClamCrunchy]

@CanadianSwine The address isn't valid.

[CanadianSwine]

@ClamCrunchy You should check it out as well.

[CanadianSwine]

@Jel625 I Thik this guy has a compellig argument ad you should check it out /ww w.you tube. com /wa tch?v=DZKR 0xckFuY&feature=plcp&cont ext=C3cd21ceUDOEgsToPD skLwtw97ifTI71ByIBcrx8NC

[clockwise3559]

Stop bickering you two