[CS] CBD Public Lecture "The Shortsighted Brain: Neuroeconomics and the governance of choice in time" by Natasha Dow Schull 3.27.12 5:30pm MLH

[Ryan McLaughlin]

*PLEASE ANNOUNCE*

The Hampshire College Program in Culture, Brain, and Development 
Presents the second lecture in our Neuroscience & Society Series:
*"The Shortsighted Brain: Neuroeconomics and the governance of choice in 
time" *
A Public Lecture by Natasha Dow Schüll, associate professor Program in 
Science, Technology, and Society at MIT
March 27, 2012
5:30pm FPH Main Lecture Hall, Hampshire College

ABSTRACT: The young field of neuroeconomics converges around behavioral 
deviations from the model of the human being as Homo economicus, a 
rational actor who calculates his choices to maximize his individual 
satisfaction. In a historical moment characterized by economic, health, 
and environmental crises, policymakers have become increasingly 
concerned about a particular deviation for which neuroeconomics offers a 
biological explanation: Why do humans value the present at the expense 
of the future? There is contentious debate within the field over how to 
model this tendency at the neural level. Should the brain be 
conceptualized as a unified decision-making apparatus, or as the site of 
conflict between an impetuous limbic system at perpetual odds with its 
deliberate and provident overseer in the prefrontal cortex? Scientific 
debates over choice-making in the brain, I will argue in this talk, are 
also debates over how to define the constraints on human reason with 
which regulative strategies must contend. Drawing on ethnographic and 
archival research, I will explore how the brain and its treatment of the 
future become the contested terrain for distinct visions of governmental 
intervention into problems of human choice-making.

BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT: Natasha Dow Schüll is a cultural anthropologist 
and associate professor at the Program in Science, Technology, and 
Society at MIT. She has recently completed a book based on extended 
research in Las Vegas among gambling addicts and the designers of the 
slot machines they play.  Her current, ongoing research concerns the 
field of neuroeconomics and what its questions and methods reveal about 
larger cultural values and priorities. Her research has been funded by 
the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the 
Woodrow Wilson Foundation, among other sources.

This event is on Tuesday, March 27th, 2012.
It is held at: Main Lecture Hall
This event starts at 5:30 pm, and ends at 7:00 pm.
This event is organized by: CBD Program
If you need special accommodations, please contact Hampshire College's 
Disabilities Services office (413)559-5423 at least one week prior to 
the lecture date

For more information visit http://www.hampshire.edu/cbd/8161.htm or 
email rmclaughlin at hampshire.edu

-- 
Ryan McLaughlin, Program Coordinator
Program in Culture, Brain and Development
Hampshire College
893 West Street Amherst, MA 01002
phone: 413.559.5501
fax: 413.559.5438
http://cbd.hampshire.edu <http://cbd.hampshire.edu/>
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