Emotion and reason the cognitive neuroscience of decision making The cognitive neuroscience of decision making

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' 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. In some psychiatric disorders the inability to respond selectively to certain stimuli can be harmful - such pathologies of decision making are additionally considered. 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. He considers the important implications that a neuroscience of decision making can have for the judiciary - how we apportion blame and responsibility

Introduction. part I - Is Decision Making Rational or Irrational?. 1. The brain: gambler and logician. 2. Decision making and emotion. 3. The pathology of decision making. Part II - Decision Making with my Second Self. 4. Fight or flight. 5. Walking and balance. 6. Deliberating with one's body: me and my second self. Part III - Perception, Preference and Decision Making. 7. To perceive visually is to decide: the physiology of doubt. 8. Decision making and shape recognition: ambiguity and rivalry. 9. Sensory conflict: perception of movement. 10. Fountains. Part IV - Magical Thinking. 11. The physiology of preference. 12. "I think, therefore I suppress". 13. The brain as emulator and generator of strategies : the vagabond thought. Epilogue.