Neuroscience. Meh.

Well, I've finished the book I mentioned in the previous post (it's got 'business hardback' double-spacing so it's quick work), and it's not brilliant. In fact it really comes across as an amalgam of three separate bits. First, some genuinely interesting insights from neuroscience. These include the importance of visual input in conception, and how the tendency to efficient use of energy in our brains leads us to look for the familiar when faced with new things (hence we can be put off if we can't find something familiar). This is used to point up some of the key features of successful iconoclasts (seeing differently, overcoming fear, social intelligence).

Second, laid on top of these insights - which whilst interesting wouldn't make a whole book on their own - is some Malcolm Gladwell style waffle, providing short stories about successful people from business, politics etc and trying to claim that the aforementioned traits are in evidence. This stuff is tedious and I would argue not really supported by the science. No surprise to see a section on investors in here, which seems to be a requirement of any behavioural science book these days. My favourite low point is the claim in the privatising space travel chapter that the skills to get someone into space are just like those needed to get a dotcom company up and running. Bleurgh!

Then finally, tacked on the end without any thought of how to mesh the content of the rest of the book, is a kind of field guide to what impact different kinds of drugs have on your brain. Again this is actually really interesting, but it just doesn't really link in with the rest of the book (which is presumably why it's described as an appendix).

Strange book, but a few useful nuggets in there.

Familiar ideas

A quick snippet. Last year I blogged a little bit about the legitimation of ideas (ie by what process an idea comes to be accepted or rejected as valid). A couple of bits on this here and here. Based on the totally non-scientific way I think my own brain operates I believe I (and probably others) have an inherent tendency to try and 'subdivide' new information by reference to concepts I already have in place.

In a stack of books I ordered recently I took a punt on this one. It turns out that I might not be miles off the mark. Berns argues that our brains are constantly trying to act as efficiently as possible, and once something is familiar (or appears to be so) they expend less effort on it. Once your brain has come across an item half a dozen times, the level of brain activity detected when being presented with it again is roughly half what it would be on first viewing. Berns argues that because our brains are seeking to be efficient we do indeed instinctively look for the familiar. It's less effort. He argues that this is why optical illusions 'work', even though we may 'know' that we are being presented with an illusion.

Ho hum.

Insights from neuro-cake-o-nomics 2

Another snippet from the RSA report:

The behavioural economist David Laibson has conducted two sets of experiments with undergraduates in the United States which show that information can actively hinder decision-making. In the first set, he asked the students to remember a three-digit number, then gave them the choice between a piece of fruit and a big, sticky chocolate bun. Most chose the piece of fruit. In the second set, he gave them the same choice, but this time asked he asked them to remember an eight-digit number – a number right at the limit of our cognitive capacity. The students overwhelmingly chose the chocolate bun. When our brains are stretched, our primal selves override our rational selves. Laibson showed that, when the students chose the piece of fruit, the area of the brain associated with long-term thinking was active. When they chose the sticky bun, it was the hungry, animal side that lit up.

Insights from neuroeconomics 1

An irregular update from the field of neuroeconomics, the frontier where neuroscience meets economics, and where startling discoveries are emerging.

Insight 1: Don't be trying to figure out what to eat for dinner and/or how much to pay for it if someone is firing magnetic pulses at your head at the time.

One new technique being used by some neuroeconomists is transcranial magnetic stimulation, in which a coil held next to the head issues a low-level magnetic pulse that temporarily disrupts activity in a certain part of the brain, to see if that changes the subject’s preferences—for example, for a particular food and how much he is willing to pay for it.

Source: The Economnist