More Brain Points

This, or that? : How decision- making can lead us astray

On a daily basis we are faced with an overwhelming amount of decisions to make, whether they are minute as hitting the snooze button, or more complex as who to vote for in the next presidential election our brains are constantly deciphering the consequences of our future decisions. The anxiety of this can cause individuals to avoid making a decision at all, or make dangerous ones they will regret.  The science behind decision making seeks to understand how, and why individuals make the decision they do. In his talk at Loyola, Brian Sweis described the neuronal mechanism that are involved in decision making. He explained how an important component to decision making which includes deliberate decision was shown in an experiment with rodents. In the restaurant row task they were interested in looking at the rodents neuroeconomical decision making, which determined if the animal took a food pellet or not when presented with a stimulus of varying wait time (Sweis). When the rodents were presented with a low wait time for the food, in comparison to a long wait time they had fewer instances of leaving as seeking another option. Looking specifically at cognitively why the rodents made this decision, OFC cells of mice were examined. The animals chose to wait the allotted time for their pellet of food because they had a threshold of time they could stand, and after that they chose to seek other options. An article in Newsweek touches on the concept of decision making, stating that our generation lacks the ability to make sound decisions because we are overwhelmed with too much information on a daily basis. In a “smart” society bogged down with  technology we have information at our fingertips that may cripple us from making our own decision that we my later regret “ Anyone addicted to incoming texts or tweets, the booming science of decision making has shown that more information can lead to objectively poorer choices, and to choices that people later regret”(Begley). Begley is explaining that the constant abundance of information is not as beneficial to our cognitive thought process  as we like to think.

Work Cited 

Begley, Sharon. "The Science of Making Decisions." Newsweek.com. N.p., 27 Feb. 2011. Web. 1 Mar.  2016. 

Redish, David. "Behavioral and neurophysiological correlates of regret in rat decision-making on a neuroeconomic task." Nature Neuroscience 17.7 (2014): 995-1002.