Decision Neuroscience

Specific questions we have tried to answer are:

  1. How people decide to share resources (see Cooperative or Competitive?) and how this is reflected in brain responses. We found that MPFC (a brain area in prefrontal cortex) represents violations of our social preferences (i.e. if you are a cooperative person, MPFC will respond to a competitive / unequal outcome).
  2. Why some people prefer investing in people whereas other prefer investing in nature? See  Investing in luck vs. investing in people
  3. How people evaluate risk and how their risk preferences (risk averse to risk neutral) are reflected in brain responses (see What is risk and risk attitudes? How is risk represented in the brain?)
  4. How social influence can make people more or less risk averse?

We are now conducting more studies trying to understand how the human brain deals with the multiple facets of risk.