Symposium
The CSCA Symposium on Neuroeconomics will be held on June 18,2010. This Symposium can be attended separately from the CSCASummer School 'Neuroeconomics: An exciting joint venture'. Registration is closed.
During the Symposium, a number of internationally renowned researchers will present their most recent work.
Programme:
10:00 - 10:15 | Frans van Winden - University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Opening
10:15 - 11:15 | Michael Platt - Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, USA
Neuroeconomics and Neuroethology of Social Learning and Decision Making
Social contexts are rife with uncertainty. Consequently, much of our sensory apparatus and cognitive skill is applied to reducing this volatility by acquiring information about others. The brain mechanisms that evaluate social information and translate it into decisions, however, remain poorly understood - despite clear dysfunction of these mechanisms in neurological disorders such as autism, social anxiety, and anorexia nervosa which are characterized by dysfunctional social motivation and decision making. In this talk, I will describe behavioral, neurophysiological, and brain imaging studies aimed at identifying the neural processes that acquire information about other individuals and their intentions and translate that information into value signals that inform decision making. Ongoing work aims to understand how and why these processes differ between individuals and varies amongst species confronting different social and ecological environments.
11:15 - 12:15 | Scott Huettel - Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, USA
The Neural Mechanisms of Strategic Decision Making
Commonmodels of decision making assume that choices reflect compensatorytradeoffs between different decision variables, as potentially manifestin the interactions of distinct brain systems. Yet, such compensatorymodels fail to account both for a wide range of decision phenomena andfor the substantial heterogeneity in the choice process. Using datafrom behavioral, eye-tracking, and neuroimaging studies, I willdescribe potential neural and psychological mechanisms that contributeto the strategic balance between compensatory and non-compensatorydecision making. Critically, elucidation of these mechanisms providesan important link to current debates in the cognitive neuroscienceliterature about the nature of control.
12:15 - 13:30 | Lunch and Poster session
13:30 - 14:30 | Kevin McCabe - School of Law, George Mason University, USA
Evolved to Trade
The human species more than any other shows a tremendous capacityfor trade. In this talk we will explore how the brain has been designedto solve the problem of trading with others.
14:30 - 15:00 | Break
15:00 - 16:00 | Richard Ridderinkhof - University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
The role of empathy, sympathy, and group-membership in cooperation
and sharing Unselfish
acts, such as donating to charity, may engender warm-glow sentiments
and promote our own well-being. We propose that sharing (transferring
resources to another person at one’s own expense), which often incites
gratification, is driven by at least three factors: 1) static traits
such as empathy (the capacity to understand and experience the affective
state that one infers to be present in another person), 2) dynamic
states such as sympathy (the compassion and prosocial care for someone
else’s well-being) that result as social ties develop, and 3) parochial
altruism (self-sacrificing to contribute to in-group welfare and to
aggress against competing out-groups).
Consistent with evolutionary perspectives on cooperation and sharing,
results from three game-experimental studies showed that humans given
oxytocin (a neuropeptide known to promote trust and cooperation) were
more altruistic towards in-group members than those given placebo.
However, cooperation and sharing broke down when recipients were members
from (competing) out-groups. In an fMRI study we examined how sympathy
(resulting from prior cooperative or competitive interaction) and trait
empathy modulate neural responses to the distribution of monetary
resources favoring another agent at a cost to oneself - and vice versa.
Modulations in AIC, ACC and striatum co-varied differentially with trait
measures of empathy, whereas modulations in pSTS co-varied with state
measures of sympathy. Sympathy-related brain activation is prevalent for
sharing in situations in which one receives at the expense of another,
while empathy-related activation is expressed strongest in situations in
which the other gains at a cost to oneself. Importantly, sympathy but
not empathy motivated prosocial cooperative behavior in subsequent
interaction. We suggest that the social ties underlying such willingness
to cooperate are modulated by oxytocin and represented in the pSTS.
16:00 - 16:30 | Ernst Fehr - Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Closing comments
16:30 | Drinks