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Rating: 
Summary: Thinking Outside the Black Box
Review: 70 years ago, behavioral economists were trapped outside the black box for the same reasons everyone was: science couldn't see inside the brain directly. Like behavioral psychologists, they decided to make a virtue out of a neccessity and ignore the black box. Now behavioral economists can look inside the black box, but most choose to ignore it, perhaps because the learning curves on physiology and imaging are so steep. Glimcher argues in this wonderful book that neuroscientists are unwittingly trapped inside the same black box, and need a way out. Maybe they can befriend those behavioral economists. Consider this book an arranged date that will hopefully turn into a long marriage. It is rare for a book aimed at the public to be written by a young and active scientist. The obvious comparison is Spikes, by Reike, et al. But whereas Spikes was too mathematical for the general reader, Decisions, Uncertainty, and the Brain never gets
boring. It describes fascinating experiments, both 100 years old and being done right now. Experiments that you've never heard of, but you should. Best of all, it describes them passionately and non-scarily. More importantly, Decisions points throughout to directions for future research, rather than only describing past experiments. Don't be fooled by the book's elegance. It is meticulously crafted to be enjoyable to the lay reader but also highly rewarding someone more familiar with the research described. In short, a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Thinking Outside the Black Box
Review: 70 years ago, behavioral economists were trapped outside the black box for the same reasons everyone was: science couldn't see inside the brain directly. Like behavioral psychologists, they decided to make a virtue out of a neccessity and ignore the black box. Now behavioral economists can look inside the black box, but most choose to ignore it, perhaps because the learning curves on physiology and imaging are so steep. Glimcher argues in this wonderful book that neuroscientists are unwittingly trapped inside the same black box, and need a way out. Maybe they can befriend those behavioral economists. Consider this book an arranged date that will hopefully turn into a long marriage. It is rare for a book aimed at the public to be written by a young and active scientist. The obvious comparison is Spikes, by Reike, et al. But whereas Spikes was too mathematical for the general reader, Decisions, Uncertainty, and the Brain never gets
boring. It describes fascinating experiments, both 100 years old and being done right now. Experiments that you've never heard of, but you should. Best of all, it describes them passionately and non-scarily. More importantly, Decisions points throughout to directions for future research, rather than only describing past experiments. Don't be fooled by the book's elegance. It is meticulously crafted to be enjoyable to the lay reader but also highly rewarding someone more familiar with the research described. In short, a masterpiece.
Rating: 
Summary: Neuro and economics, not neuroeconomics
Review: Deisions, Uncertainty, and the Brain feels undigested, as if the author crammed in the library for a month and wrote a book on his notes. Part I covers the neuro-, Part II covers the -economics, but instead of Part III, covering neuroeconomics, there's a 17-page-short chapter called "Putting It All Together." For most of the book, things don't merge. For example, chapter 5 describes important experiments by Newsome and Shadlen that are not really neuroeconomics. Four seemingly tacked-on paragraphs at the end of the chapter argue that neuroeconomics has something to say about the experiments. But it's not clear what that is, and it's not clear why Glimcher didn't choose a more obviously relevant example. A more general problem is that Glimcher argues throughout that current approaches to neuroscience are all reflex-based, and we need a major paradigm shift to make any more progress in brain research. But the examples he gives that employ his new paradigm seem to be well within the realm of normal cognitive neurophysiology. For example, the Ciaramitaro et al. attention experiments described in chapter 13 are elegant, but don't come across as paradigm shifting, in either the chapter, or the original Vision Research paper. Neuroeconomics comes to seem like just another tool in the toolbox, instead of a big new theory. It may be that there is no Part III because the science has not yet happened. In which case, not writing more about it was a good thing to do. Parsimony is a virtue, but if there is not enough of a story to tell, I would have liked to see the author present his ideas about the major problems for the field, a Hilbert's 23 for neuroscience in the 21st century. Instead chapter 13 gives us four toy problems in primate physiology. The best parts of the book are the history. Some of the stories are familiar, but most are not, and all are told engagingly. Although they don't really come together into a cohesive whole, they are interesting on their own, and a reader with a detailed knowledge of the field can connect most of the dots.
Rating:
Summary: Neuro and economics, not neuroeconomics
Review: Deisions, Uncertainty, and the Brain feels undigested, as if the author crammed in the library for a month and wrote a book on his notes. Part I covers the neuro-, Part II covers the -economics, but instead of Part III, covering neuroeconomics, there's a 17-page-short chapter called "Putting It All Together." For most of the book, things don't merge. For example, chapter 5 describes important experiments by Newsome and Shadlen that are not really neuroeconomics. Four seemingly tacked-on paragraphs at the end of the chapter argue that neuroeconomics has something to say about the experiments. But it's not clear what that is, and it's not clear why Glimcher didn't choose a more obviously relevant example. A more general problem is that Glimcher argues throughout that current approaches to neuroscience are all reflex-based, and we need a major paradigm shift to make any more progress in brain research. But the examples he gives that employ his new paradigm seem to be well within the realm of normal cognitive neurophysiology. For example, the Ciaramitaro et al. attention experiments described in chapter 13 are elegant, but don't come across as paradigm shifting, in either the chapter, or the original Vision Research paper. Neuroeconomics comes to seem like just another tool in the toolbox, instead of a big new theory. It may be that there is no Part III because the science has not yet happened. In which case, not writing more about it was a good thing to do. Parsimony is a virtue, but if there is not enough of a story to tell, I would have liked to see the author present his ideas about the major problems for the field, a Hilbert's 23 for neuroscience in the 21st century. Instead chapter 13 gives us four toy problems in primate physiology. The best parts of the book are the history. Some of the stories are familiar, but most are not, and all are told engagingly. Although they don't really come together into a cohesive whole, they are interesting on their own, and a reader with a detailed knowledge of the field can connect most of the dots.
Rating: 
Summary: Good first effort towards integrating neuro and econ
Review: One of this book's greatest gifts is to clearly explain how our thinking about our thinking (neuroscience) has evolved over the past 2000 years. This book makes a significant contribution to the readers' historical understanding of psychology, philosophy, mathematics, and game theory. One weakness of the book's approach is the lack of references to affect (emotion), which is suggested to have an impact on human utility and probability estimations in (Loewenstein, Loewenstein, Weber, & Welch, 2000), (Slovic, Finucane, Peters, and MacGregor, 2002), and (Knutson and Peterson, 2003). In fact, Glimcher states: "Neuroeconomics provides a model of the architecture that links brain and behavior. Mind, though it may very much exist, simply does not figure in that equation (p343)." The author's conclusions are limited to a logical, computational frame of reference - a form of computational behaviorism. This style certainly has applications within limited experimental games, but it is doubtful that it will provide significant insight into the workings of complex dynamic systems, such as the financial markets, without incorporating symbolic psychological concepts (such as affect). This book is an excellent introduction to the field of neuroeconomics. Glimcher's exposition of the evolution of neuroscientific thought is fascinating and worth savoring. Glimcher's discussion of game theory is fascinating, but applications to real-world environments are not directly posited. The latter half of the book, while intellectually interesting, reads much like an expanded academic journal article. Glimcher explains his lab's experimental trials and tribulations in much of the second half...
Rating:
Summary: Good first effort towards integrating neuro and econ
Review: One of this book's greatest gifts is to clearly explain how our thinking about our thinking (neuroscience) has evolved over the past 2000 years. This book makes a significant contribution to the readers' historical understanding of psychology, philosophy, mathematics, and game theory. One weakness of the book's approach is the lack of references to affect (emotion), which is suggested to have an impact on human utility and probability estimations in (Loewenstein, Loewenstein, Weber, & Welch, 2000), (Slovic, Finucane, Peters, and MacGregor, 2002), and (Knutson and Peterson, 2003). In fact, Glimcher states: "Neuroeconomics provides a model of the architecture that links brain and behavior. Mind, though it may very much exist, simply does not figure in that equation (p343)." The author's conclusions are limited to a logical, computational frame of reference - a form of computational behaviorism. This style certainly has applications within limited experimental games, but it is doubtful that it will provide significant insight into the workings of complex dynamic systems, such as the financial markets, without incorporating symbolic psychological concepts (such as affect). This book is an excellent introduction to the field of neuroeconomics. Glimcher's exposition of the evolution of neuroscientific thought is fascinating and worth savoring. Glimcher's discussion of game theory is fascinating, but applications to real-world environments are not directly posited. The latter half of the book, while intellectually interesting, reads much like an expanded academic journal article. Glimcher explains his lab's experimental trials and tribulations in much of the second half...
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