Neuroeconomics

Why are you reading this? Perhaps you found the Oxford Student in the JCR and are trying to take your mind off that all-too-nearby exam. Or maybe you spotted someone else reading it intently. Or, more likely, you picked it up as it was there, and, as we all know, anything free is good. It may surprise you that how we make such decisions is engaging some of the finest minds in three disciplines - economics, psychology and neuroscience – resulting in the invention of a new field of study: neuroeconomics.

Economists have long thought that we calmly weigh our decisions, thinking out all possible short- and long-term consequences, and always choose the option that will give the best results. Homo economicus drinks in moderation, never smokes, does the laundry and ironing, and never wakes up next to someone who only seemed attractive the night before, right?

That's where psychology – or common sense – comes in to point out that this is a terrific model of a saint/robot but might fall down for you or me. But psychologists themselves do not always seem attached to the real world, spending their time researching fractional differences in response times, for instance, when your hear the name of a dog if your arms are crossed – hardly everyday occurrences for us or homo economicus. And with neuroimaging, psychologists now demonstrate that certain parts of the brain (rather than say the liver) light up when hearing dog names if your arms are crossed too.

But, put these ingredients together and something exciting occurs. Economists and psychologists start to consider how real people might make irrational decisions. Neuroscientists look in the brain and find reasons why this may happen.

Here's one example. I shop on eBay, and am often willing to pay more than I ought. Why am I so irrational? Neuroeconomists show this is perfectly natural; in a social context we never want to lose out. No way someone else is going to run off with my shoes! And for this we can blame our brains: a small clump of cells which values the important things in life (food, drink, sex) tells us that winning against competitors is worth more than the shoes themselves.

But does wanting to win make us losers? Perhaps. As someone once said, “Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.” Neuroeconomists are well on the way to making our irrationality seem logical - even if our logic may forever remain irrational.

The autistic gene

When my nephew was 9 years old he was obsessed with taps. Whenever he saw a tap, he had to turn it on. He has always been very good at drawing, he likes to draw even the smallest details you and I would miss. And if you want to know what day of the week March 23 is in 2050, just ask him and you will get the answer within seconds. He is a grown man now. He does not have many friends, he prefers being on his own. He has autism.

This week a study in Nature revealed evidence for a link between a specific gene and the development of autism.

Autism is a so-called neurodevelopmental disorder whereby the normal growth patterns of the central nervous system and the brain are altered. This abnormal development often results in learning disabilities, and social and emotional problems.

Over the years, there has been a lot of speculation as to what causes the brain and nervous system of autistic people to develop in a different way compared to the normal development. This has led to outrageous speculations about the lack of oxygen at birth, and to masses of people refusing to vaccinate their children with the MMR vaccine to protect them from getting measles, mumps and rubella, because of a falsely assumed link between autism and the vaccine for which no-one ever found any convincing evidence.

More controlled research has recently led to the discovery that the abnormal development seen in autism is especially affecting frontal regions of the brain. With the help of these regions we make plans and decisions and they do also support our interactions with other people. Another important discovery about the structure of the autistic brain is that there are a smaller number of pathways used for communication within the frontal lobes and between the frontal lobes and other regions in the brains of autistic people.

The article in Nature describes how in a group of 10.000 subjects consisting of autistic patients and their families, common genetic variants on 5p14.1 were identified. This gene has been tentatively linked with autism before, and this study confirms its importance in autism.

Thus, this study does not only show us the gene involved in autism, we can also derive from it that the class of genes to which this specific gene belongs is important for the normal development of structure and communication pathways in the healthy human brain.

Having a gene to hold accountable for autism does pose some ethical questions; with genetic screening it is possible to look at the genetic make-up of the unborn child and you could, based on the results, decide whether to proceed the pregnancy, or that, maybe, it's better for everybody not to have the child ... But given that the development of autism is not solely dependent on the genetic expression and there is a likely chance your child will be completely healthy, do you really want to make these decisions? And do we really want to rid the world of the Lewis Carrolls, Glenn Goulds, Beethovens, Vincent van Goghs and Wittgensteins, all of whom are suspected to have had autistic traits?