Midbrain Mutiny

An analysis of how economic theories can be used to understand disordered and pathological gambling that calls on empirical evidence about behavior and the brain and argues that addictive gambling is the basic form of all addiction. The explanatory power of economic theory is tested by the phenomenon of irrational consumption, examples of which include such addictive behaviors as disordered and pathological gambling. Midbrain Mutiny examines different economic models of disordered gambling, using the frameworks of neuroeconomics (which analyzes decision making in the brain) and picoeconomics (which analyzes patterns of consumption behavior), and drawing on empirical evidence about behavior and the brain. The book describes addiction in neuroeconomic terms as chronic disruption of the balance between the midbrain dopamine system and the prefrontal and frontal serotonergic system, and reviews recent evidence from trials testing the effectiveness of antiaddiction drugs. The authors argue that the best way to understand disordered and addictive gambling is with a hybrid picoeconomic-neuroeconomic model.

The intertwining of addiction and responsibility in personal, philosophical, legal, research, and clinical contexts. Addictive behavior threatens not just the addict's happiness and health but also the welfare and well-being of others. It represents a loss of self-control and a variety of other cognitive impairments and behavioral deficits. An addict may say, "I couldn't help myself." But questions arise: are we responsible for our addictions? And what responsibilities do others have to help us? This volume offers a range of perspectives on addiction and responsibility and how the two are bound together. Distinguished contributors—from theorists to clinicians, from neuroscientists and psychologists to philosophers and legal scholars—discuss these questions in essays using a variety of conceptual and investigative tools. Some contributors offer models of addiction-related phenomena, including theories of incentive sensitization, ego-depletion, and pathological affect; others address such traditional philosophical questions as free will and agency, mind-body, and other minds. Two essays, written by scholars who were themselves addicts, attempt to integrate first-person phenomenological accounts with the third-person perspective of the sciences. Contributors distinguish among moral responsibility, legal responsibility, and the ethical responsibility of clinicians and researchers. Taken together, the essays offer a forceful argument that we cannot fully understand addiction if we do not also understand responsibility.

What has neuroscience got to do with branding? The link may not be immediately obvious, but the fact is, our brains select brands in much the same way that Google selects websites. So, just as web marketers play on Google’s algorithm to make sure their site appears as high up the search list as possible, brand marketers should play on the brain’s algorithm to make sure their brand is at the top of their customers’ minds at the moment they choose which brand to buy. This ground-breaking new book brings the proven effects of hard science to the creative practice of branding. It shows you how to harness this powerful combination to your own advantage by helping you understand how customers’ brains work when they choose brands. A strong brand cannot be build effectively without taking into account the laws of the brain – which, as this book shows, really exist and can be scientifically proven to work. Once you know this, you can apply the familiar branding laws of relevance, coherence and participation more precisely, more confidently and to much greater effect. This means your brand will have a much greater chance of being chosen by customers than your competitors’ brands. Branding with Brainsshatters the conventional approach to branding, which is based on hunches and intuition, by uncovering the hard, scientific truth about why customers choose some brands over others. Insights into company stories, from Leica to Innocent Drinks, from Starbucks to Schipol International Airport, give you the fascinating truth about how the processes that go on in our brain affect our decisions to buy a particular product or service. All in all, this breathtakingly radical new book from Tjaco Walvis presents a daringly different, state of the art approach to brand strategy that will help you build powerful brands more efficiently, more effectively and more reliably than ever before. Branding really is all in the mind – and this book proves it!

Economic methodology has traditionally been associated with logical positivism in the vein of Milton Friedman, Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos and Thomas Kuhn. However, the emergence and proliferation of new research programs in economics have stimulated many novel developments in economic methodology. This impressive Companion critically examines these advances in methodological thinking, particularly those that are associated with the new research programs which challenge standard economic methodology. Bringing together a collection of leading contributors to this new methodological thinking, the authors explain how it differs from the past and point towards further concerns and future issues. The recent research programs explored include behavioral and experimental economics, neuroeconomics, new welfare theory, happiness and subjective well-being research, geographical economics, complexity and computational economics, agent-based modeling, evolutionary thinking, macroeconomics and Keynesianism after the crisis, and new thinking about the status of the economics profession and the role of the media in economics. This important compendium will prove invaluable for researchers and postgraduate students of economic methodology and the philosophy of economics. Practitioners in the vanguard of new economic thinking will also find plenty of useful information in this path-breaking book.

The Disordered Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Mental Illness, second edition examines and explains, from a philosophical standpoint, what mental disorder is: its reality, causes, consequences, and more. It is also an outstanding introduction to philosophy of mind from the perspective of mental disorder. Revised and updated throughout, this second edition includes new discussions of grief and psychopathy, the problems of the psychophysical basis of disorder, the nature of selfhood, and clarification of the relation between rationality and mental disorder. Each chapter explores a central question or problem about mental disorder, including: what is mental disorder and can it be distinguished from neurological disorder? what roles should reference to psychological, cultural, and social factors play in the medical/scientific understanding of mental disorder? what makes mental disorders undesirable? Are they diseases? mental disorder and the mind-body problem is mental disorder a breakdown of rationality? What is a rational mind? addiction, responsibility and compulsion ethical dilemmas posed by mental disorder, including questions of dignity and self-respect. Each topic is clearly explained and placed in a clinical and philosophical context. Mental disorders discussed include clinical depression, dissociative identity disorder, anxiety, religious delusions, and paranoia. Several non-mental neurological disorders that possess psychological symptoms are also examined, including Alzheimer's disease, Down's syndrome, and Tourette's syndrome. Containing chapter summaries and suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, The Disordered Mind, second edition is a superb introduction to the philosophy of mental disorder for students of philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, and related mental health professions.

This volume is the first comprehensive, cohesive, and accessible reference source to the philosophy of economics, presenting important new scholarship by top scholars.

"The image of the addict in popular culture combines victimhood and moral failure; we sympathize with addicts in films and novels because of their suffering and their hard-won knowledge. And yet actual scientific knowledge about addiction tends to undermine this cultural construct. In What Is Addiction? leading addiction researchers from neuroscience, psychology, genetics, philosophy, economics, and other fields survey the latest findings in addiction science. They discuss such questions as whether addiction is one kind of condition, or several; if addiction is neurophysiological, psychological, or social, or incorporates aspects of all of these; to what extent addicts are responsible for their problems, and how this affects health and regulatory policies; and whether addiction is determined by inheritance or environment or both." --Book Jacket.

Classical Economics, Keynes and Money casts new light on an approach to economic theory and policy that combines the modern classical theory of prices and income distribution with a Keynesian analysis of money and finance. Structured in four parts, the work considers issues within classical economics, monetary economics, Keynesian and post-Keynesian Economics, rationality and economic methodology. These themes are all central to the work of Carlo Panico, and the chapters both reflect on and build on his key contributions to the field. This collection is of interest to advanced students and researchers in the history of economic thought, monetary theory, financial economics and heterodox economics.