Neuroscience of decision making: models, methods and findings

Event Description:

The principle of rationality assumes that we will choose the best decision available. In fact, there is a lot of evidence that we have developed multiple mechanisms to optimize this process in order to favor survival, allowing choices in the physical and social environment that achieve general objectives to avoid harm and obtain rewards, minimizing the costs of time, effort and missed opportunities. However, in affective-social contexts, it is common for subjects to complain that many of their choices seem to contradict what they would like to actually do or understand as the best option, repeating harmful patterns such as substance abuse. Even in contexts of explicit rationality, as in a chess game, it is still unclear how the decision-making mechanisms behave in the face of the complexity and dynamism of the environment. Given this, the lecture aims to present and discuss some theoretical models, evaluation methods and findings related to these two poles of the spectrum of decision making.