[CS] TODAY 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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