On Dec. 11, Brown will host four experts for a conference titled "Neuroeconomics: Decision-Making and the Brain" where they will discuss various aspects and applications of the increasingly popular emerging science.
Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences Steven Sloman described the study of neuroeconomics as "a kind of offshoot of judgment and decision making, or more a field that lies at the convergence of judgment and decision making and neuroimaging."
"Some of what (these researchers) do is to take decision making tasks that psychologists have been studying for a long time and ask people to do them while they take pictures of their brains," Sloman said.
One of the scholars scheduled to speak at the conference, Drazen Prelec, professor of management science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, has researched which products people prefer to save for and which they prefer to buy on credit, according to his Web site biography.
According to Sloman, by attempting to understand why people perceive some things as pleasurable, rewarding, risky or trustworthy, the field has the potential to transform industries like marketing. Though it sounds like science fiction, neuroeconomics may make it possible to tap into people's brains and market to them directly, Sloman said.
Neuroeconomics is a relatively new academic field. There have been writings on it since the 1980s, but only recently has it begun to attract the attention of many economists, said Professor of Economics Roberto Serrano.
"It's still a reasonably small field, and we still don't know yet what it's bringing us," Serrano said. "From the point of view of having a conference here, it's very exciting stuff to hear what the experts have to teach us."
The experts slated to speak at the conference include Prelec, Kevin McCabe, professor of economics and law at George Mason University, Joseph Kable, researcher at New York University's Center for Neural Science and Andrew Caplin, professor of economics at New York University.
"The speakers were chosen in an attempt to reflect the different directions that have been taken by the field in the hope of conveying the variety of approaches," wrote Associate Professor of Economics Kfir Eliaz, the main organizer of the event, in an e-mail to The Herald.
Three of the speakers have already announced the topics they plan to address at the conference. Kable will give a speech entitled "The Neural Correlates of Subjective Value During Intertemporal Choice," Prelec will discuss "Neuroeconomics and the Neural Determinants of Shopping" and Caplin's topic will be "Testing Axiomatic Models in Neuroscience."
The goals of the conference are to expose Brown researchers to some of the cutting-edge research happening at other institutions, and to showcase the research being done at Brown to some of the field's leading experts, Eliaz wrote.
"Brown University has excellent brain-imaging capabilities and a large community that is interested in decision making and the brain," Eliaz wrote. "This community spans many departments such that researchers in one field are not aware of closely related work that is done in another field."
Eliaz, who came to Brown in September after six years as an assistant professor at NYU, wrote that NYU's recent emphasis on neuroeconomics has put them in the spotlight of the popular press.
"The hope is that this could be done also for Brown," Eliaz wrote.
The conference will take place in Room 220 of Sidney Frank Hall at 1:00 p.m. Tuesday.
