| Functional MRI (fMRI) allows scientists to map brain activity in living, breathing, decision-making human beings. Read Montague gives an overview of how this technology is helping us understand the complicated ways in which we interact with each other. |
Montague's teams in Virginia and in London lead fascinating research in computational neuroscience (how the brain's "machinery" works), offering insight into the relationship between the social and cognitive functions. For instance, a recent study from his group found that in small social groups, some people will alter the expression of their IQ in reaction to social pressures -- revising, in almost all cases, downward.
Montague is also the author of Your Brain Is (Almost) Perfect: How We Make Decisions, a book that looks at how we decide what we consume to the romantic, ethical, and financial choices we make.
According to Montague,
The interesting thing about studying cognition has been that we've been limited, in a way. We just haven't had the tools to look at interacting brains simultaneously. The fact is, though, we're a profoundly social creature. We're not a solitary mind that even when we're alone, built out of properties that kept it alive in the world independent of other people. In fact, our minds depend on other people. They depend on other people, and they're expressed in other people, so the notion of who you are, you often don't know who you are until you see yourself in interaction with people that are close to you, people that are enemies of you, people that are agnostic to you. So this is the first sort of step into using that insight into what makes us human beings, turning it into a tool, and trying to gain new insights into mental illness.
SOURCE TED
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