How brain structures can influence our decision-making process?

Neuroscience came to my interests in the undergraduate degree, when I realized that our thoughts and decisions are closely attached to brain physiology. In this case, understanding certain phenomena of the brain is somehow understanding the backend of people’s behavior and decision-making process.

After my bachelor’s degree, where I researched the influence of neurobiological aspects in the definition of behavioral trends, I started a post-graduate program in neuropsychology. At the moment, the focus of my research was on the neuroanatomy of the human decision-making process. It means that I reviewed an entire base of articles, looking for brain structures that would influence reasoning. The final work was a compilation of all those structures, presenting their specific function to decision-making.

To make a long story short, I can mention a few principles behind the manner how we decide:

One of the greatest myths about how human beings think is the one that assumes our rationality as the core of our thoughts.

Imagine that you are in a forest, and suddenly you see a bear running towards you. A rational paradigm would require you to make many small and mathematical decisions until you could do something. To keep you alive, the brain created some shortcuts that are based on the flow of hormones. It associates the scene of a bear chasing you with some chemicals that are felt like a bad feeling, spread other ones that inform your body that it can kill and, in the end, you simply run as fast as you can.

The premise applies to any situation in our lives, and not only the extreme ones, as the one just mentioned. Simply because the brain cannot afford to process all the tiny decisions it is required to, in a rational manner. We apply emotional shortcuts for basically everything, even though we can justify it through rational terms. António Damásio, one of the most outstanding neuroscientists in the world, calls it somatic markers.

As we evolved and got differentiated from other mammals, our brain was required to dwell more sophisticated functions, like the one related to the processing of languages, in a broad sense. Since we still have primitive regions, conflicts between them and the sophisticated ones for decision-making are quite usual.

An example comes when you stare in front of an expensive, branded, good. Buying it would make you feel better accepted by your pairs, while, on the other hand, it can also make you waste money on something you don’t actually need.

While the primitive mind acts as the evil character, telling you to go for it, the sophisticated one, remembers that you are supposed to save money. The game ends when you see that this product is on sale only for today: so, this is not expensive anymore, as the primitive mind says, and you buy.

While in prehistory, you had no chances to survive unless as a member of a group. Even though modern life is not as hostile as before, our brain still requires us to be close to others as a strategy to keep us alive.

The main consequence of that premise is the necessity we have to present ourselves as valuable human beings for others.