How we decide: brain work systems and mechanisms of behavior formation

The brain does not operate in a state of emptiness, but it makes all decisions within the context of the real world. The famous psychologist Herbert Simon, Nobel laureate, compared the human brain to scissors. He suggested that one blade of the scissors is the brain, and the other is the specific environment through which it works. If you want to understand how the scissors work, you need to look at both blades together. To achieve this, we will leave the laboratory and go into the real world to see the scissors in action. We will see how some dopamine nerve cells saved a warship during the Gulf War, and how frantic activity in one area of the brain led to the real estate bubble in the mortgage crisis. We will learn how firefighters handle dangerous fires, visit poker tables at the World Championship, and meet scientists using brain imaging technology to understand how people make investment decisions, choose political candidates, and how some benefit from this new knowledge to produce better TV programs, win more football matches, improve medical care, and enhance military intelligence. This book aims to answer two important questions for almost everyone, from CEOs and academic philosophers to economists and airline pilots: How does the human mind make decisions? And how can we make those decisions better?