“YOU did not use your head.”
This is the usual judgmental assessment when a person makes a seemingly wrong decision. So does our brain influence our decision making? How does our brain decide?
Bothersome evening news involve the killings of toddlers by their own fathers. One died by strangulation and the other by a fatal blow in the head using the child’s feeding bottle.
A study conducted by scientists Jan Glascher and Ralph Adolphs suggests that the brain relies on two separate networks. One, determines the overall value–risk versus reward of individual choices and the other guides how you ultimately behave.
Adolphs explains that when one of them goes offline, impulsive behavior gets stronger and may not be inhibited. Glascher, lead author of the study and visiting associate at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, U.S.A., refers us to the seat of higher level reasoning in the brain. “Cognitive control and value based decision making appear to depend on different brain regions within the prefrontal cortex,” says Glascher.
The study found that another brain area, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, evaluates risk and reward as part of a neural network that also includes the orbito frontal. In conclusion, the findings state that damage to the orbito frontal is more insidious.
On the other hand, Adolphs tells us that understanding how the brain parcels out decision making tasks could offer insight into conditions in which such networks go awry, such as in the case of psychiatric disorder.
“Depressed people for example already have difficulty with value based decision making because nothing feels good or seems appealing, all options appear equally bleak and making choices becomes impossible,” he said.
Adolphs cited the importance of assisting those with brain impairment and the need for understanding how to improve the functions of these brain regions that could also potentially help cognitive healthy folks deal with the constant onslaught of distractions that typifies modern life.
Findings of both scientists were published in the proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012.
The Mental Health Bill sponsored by Sen. Risa Hontiveros could provide solutions to issues haunting our society today especially the undiagnosed mental state of some of our citizens. The inclusion of mental health in our school curriculum could likewise help in the determination of depression among students.