Articles tagged with "decision_making"

01/26/2013 18:47:21
For Love or Money: Marriage and Economic Development in the Past
Douglas Smith
Getting married and moving out of your parents' house may be key to your personal economic development, but are marriage patterns key to an entire society's development as well? Professor of Social Science History Tracy Dennison tells us what love's got to do with it at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, January 30, 2013, in Caltech's Beckman Auditorium. Admission is free.
12/03/2007 08:00:00
Attractiveness Is Its Own Reward
Kathy Svitil
Studies of the snap judgments we often make about people are shedding new light not only on social behavior, but also on drug abuse, gambling addiction, and other disorders in which our ability to make decisions is impaired, say scientists at the California Institute of Technology.
 
11/14/2007 08:00:00
Neuroscientists Uncover Brain Region Involved in Voluntary Behavior
Kathy Svitil
Scientists at the California Institute of Technology have deciphered the activity of an area of the brain that could one day prove vital in the development of neural prostheses--within-the-brain implants that would translate thought into movement in paralyzed patients. The results of this study were published as the featured article in the November 8 issue of Neuron.
 
03/21/2007 07:00:00
Certain Types of Brain Damage Can Improve Utilitarian Moral Judgments, Research Shows
Robert Tindol
Quick response! What's the best thing to do on a lifeboat with one too many people on board? Should one throw a mortally injured person overboard to ensure definite survival for everyone else, or refuse to act and ensure certain death for all individuals in the boat?
 
12/08/2005 08:00:00
Experimental Economists Find Brain Regions That Govern Fear of the Economic Unknown
Robert Tindol
Do you have second thoughts when ordering a strange-sounding dish at an exotic restaurant? Afraid you'll get fricasseed eye of newt, or something even worse? If you do, it's because certain neurons in the brain are saying that the potential reward for the risk is unknown. These regions of the brain have now been pinpointed by experimental economists at the California Institute of Technology and the University of Iowa College of Medicine.
 
05/19/2005 07:00:00
Caltech Neuroscientists Unlock Secrets of How the Brain Is Wired for Sex
Robert Tindol

Reporting in the May 19 issue of the journal Neuron, David Anderson, Caltech's Roger W. Sperry Professor of Biology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, his graduate student Gloria Choi, and their colleagues describe their discovery that the neural pathway between the amygdala and hypothalamus thought to govern reproductive behaviors is marked by a gene with the rather unromantic name of Lhx6.

 
03/31/2005 08:00:00
Scientists Use fMRI to Catch Test Subjectsin the Act of Trusting One Another
Robert Tindol
Who do you trust? The question may seem distinctly human--and limited only to "quality" humans, at that--but it turns out that trust is handled by the human brain in pretty much the same way that obtaining a food award is handled by the brain of an insect. In other words, it's all a lot more primitive than we think.
 
03/16/2005 08:00:00
Scientists Discover What You Are Thinking

By decoding signals coming from neurons, scientists at the California Institute of Technology have confirmed that an area of the brain known as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vPF) is involved in the planning stages of movement, that instantaneous flicker of time when we contemplate moving a hand or other limb.

 
01/05/2005 08:00:00
Neuroscientists discover that humans evaluate emotions by looking at the eyes
Robert Tindol
If your mother ever told you to watch out for strangers with shifty eyes, you can start taking her advice to heart. Neuroscientists exploring a region of the brain associated with the recognition of emotional expressions have concluded that it is the eye region that we scan when our brains process information about other people's emotions.
 
02/11/2004 08:00:00
Zombie Behaviors Are Part of Everyday Life, According to Neurobiologists
Robert Tindol

PASADENA, Ca.--When you're close to that woman you love this Valentine's Day, her fragrance may cause you to say to yourself, "Hmmm, Chanel No.

 
11/13/2003 08:00:00
The length of the gaze affects human preferences, new study shows
Robert Tindol
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but a new psychophysical study from the California Institute of Technology suggests that the length of the beholding is important, too.
 
Subscribe to Caltech News tagged with "decision_making"