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*PLEASE ANNOUNCE* <br>
<br>
The Hampshire College Program in Culture, Brain, and Development
Presents the second lecture in our Neuroscience & Society
Series: <br>
<b>"The Shortsighted Brain: Neuroeconomics and the governance of
choice in time" </b> <br>
A Public Lecture by Natasha Dow Schüll, associate professor Program
in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT<br>
March 27, 2012 <br>
5:30pm FPH Main Lecture Hall, Hampshire College<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
This event is on Tuesday, March 27th, 2012.<br>
It is held at: Main Lecture Hall<br>
This event starts at 5:30 pm, and ends at 7:00 pm.<br>
This event is organized by: CBD Program <br>
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<br>
<br>
For more information visit <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.hampshire.edu/cbd/8161.htm">http://www.hampshire.edu/cbd/8161.htm</a> or
email <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:rmclaughlin@hampshire.edu">rmclaughlin@hampshire.edu</a> <br>
<br>
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Ryan McLaughlin, Program Coordinator<br>
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<div class="moz-signature"><small>Program in Culture, Brain and
Development</small><br>
<small> Hampshire College </small><br>
<small> 893 West Street Amherst, MA 01002</small><small><br>
phone: 413.559.5501 </small><br>
<small> fax: 413.559.5438</small><br>
<small> <a href="http://cbd.hampshire.edu/">http://cbd.hampshire.edu</a></small>
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