How We Decide - Great Video Lecture by Jonah Lehrer, Neuroscientist

Making Innovation Happen
Antonio Damasio is David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, where he heads USC's Brain and Creativity Institute and Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute. Here is an excellent study on how emotions help us make better decisions
In 1997, when she was 44, a massive stroke cost painter Katherine Sherwood the permanent use of her right hand. Today, the Bay Area artist is painting with her left hand, her career more successful than ever. Back in 1980, an aneurysm from a previously undiagnosed brain abnormality required surgery that completely wiped out noted jazz guitarist Pat Martino's musical memory. Surgeons told him he had been two hours away from death, put him to sleep, and removed 60 percent of his left temporal lobe. Playing with a computer and listening to his old recordings, Martino, who lives in South Philadelphia, taught himself to play again and has made more than a dozen albums. In 2004 he won the Downbeat magazine readers poll as "Guitarist of the Year."
A new study claims that mild to moderate memory loss, or mental decline, in adulthood can be attributed to abnormal brain lesions associated with Alzheimer’s. In other words, a decrease in mental acuity may not be a result of mere aging. The research was led by Robert S. Wilson, senior neuropsychologist at the Rush Alzheimer’s Center at Rush University Medical Center. The 16 year study focused on a group of 354 catholic nuns, priests and brothers; over the course of the study, the participants were regularly checked for mental acuity up to 14 times before they died. Specifically, they were checked in the following areas: verbal fluency, perceptual speed and IQ. Additional three “types” of memory were assessed:
How do we know what other people are thinking? How do we judge them, and what happens in our brains when we do? MIT neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe is tackling those tough questions and many others. Her goal is no less than understanding how the brain gives rise to the abilities that make us uniquely human–making moral judgments, developing belief systems and understanding language. It’s a huge task, but “different chunks of it can be bitten off in different ways,” she says. Saxe, who joined MIT’s faculty in 2006 as an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences, specializes in social cognition–how people interpret other people’s thoughts. It’s a difficult subject to get at, since people’s thoughts and beliefs can’t be observed directly.