Publication date: Nov 23, 2010 5:34:08 PM
Yesterday, my colleague Becca Stoloff and I presented an experiment that we've been piloting to a group of fellow brain imagers. They gave us some really good feedback, but I'd say the most useful thing was forcing myself to go through the literature again and try to boil it down to about 10 minutes of cognitive neuroscience that a moderately well-educated grad student would understand. In particular, I came up with the following idea for a table that describes one way of slicing up the kids of influences on decisions we make all the time:
| "Right Answer" | "Best Answer" | "Any Answer" | |
| External / World | perception, | "decision theory," neuroeconomics | Free choice selection |
| Internal / Body | reaction time studies, reaching studies | optimal control theory (actually "best" here is still usually defined by external constraints) | Perhaps free choice timing? |
I think this might not be the best way to characterize things, but it's a start at some sort of coherent way for thinking about decisions. I also made the following fun video (which sadly, is currently breaking my CMS):
Hopefully, I'll get this sorted out soon!