[CS] TUESDAY 3.27 CBD Public Lecture "The Shortsighted Brain: Neuroeconomics and the governance of choice in time" by Natasha Dow Schull 5:30pm MLH

[Ryan McLaughlin]

>
> 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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