The Marketplace in Your Brain
Neuroscientists have found brain cells that compute value. Why are economists ignoring them?
The Marketplace in Your Brain
Neuroscientists have found brain cells that compute value. Why are economists ignoring them?
Similar Posts
Birth Control Ruling Upsets Religious Groups
In a long-anticipated decision that will affect millions of women’s ability to pay for contraception, the Obama administration announced that it would not allow religiously affiliated employers such as universities and hospitals to deny full birth control coverage to the women they employ. Under the new rule, set forth by the Affordable Care Act, most…
Theorists Feast on Higgs Data
The popping of champagne corks may have subsided since scientists presented convincing evidence for the existence of the long-sought Higgs boson, but the work has just begun for theoretical particle physicists, who are revelling in the biggest glut of data they’ve had since the 1990s. Many are working evenings and weekends to interpret the results,…
Evo-Bio of Religion: Overshoot Hypotheses, Continued
From David Barash at The Chronicle’s Brainstorm blog: When it comes to evolution and human beings, what we don’t know is if anything more interesting than what we do. Among these mysteries, of course, is religion, and among the reasonable hypotheses thus far adduced, there are several based on what I call “overshoot.” The basic…
Physicists Discover Mechanisms of Wrinkle and Crumple Formation
Smooth wrinkles and sharply crumpled regions are familiar motifs in biological and synthetic sheets, such as plant leaves and crushed foils, say physicists Benny Davidovitch, Narayanan Menon and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, but how a featureless sheet develops a complex shape has long remained elusive. Now, in a cover story of the…
Life On Earth Evolved From ‘Redundant’ Chemical Systems
The earliest cells were unstable chemical systems that survived by combining a handful of shaky carbon-based assemblies together, researchers say. All life on Earth is based on carbon. To create living matter from carbon, organisms carry out chemical reactions such as photosynthesis to generate organic compounds from the carbon dioxide in the environment. These mechanisms,…
Gene Variant Linked to Personality Traits, Longevity
A study by brain researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) recently found that a dopamine-receptor gene variant that is related to personality traits can also impact healthy aging. Their findings were published in The Journal of Neuroscience. In the paper, the researchers described how the gene variant, known as DRD4 7R allele, is…