Decision making: emotions, formal logic, and games

Dozent/in:

Alexander Pastukhov

Angaben:

Seminar

Termine:

Mo, 12:00 - 14:00, MG2/01.11

Inhalt:

An English-language seminar course on neural mechanisms that underpin decision making at all levels. The course covers broad range of topics that introduce the emotional and analytical decision making systems and their interaction in your daily experience. We start with the low level perceptual decision making (signal detection theory, sequential analysis framework, race models) and gambling (making a decision about a lucky number based on prior history). Then, we will discuss the influence of emotions (e.g., how marketing sways your purchasing decisions), game theory (how do you make the decision, if you know that I can try to predict it?), free will (how can you be sure that you made the decision?), and moral judgements in humans and animals. The course is taught in English, which will allow you build vocabulary on the topic.

Neuroscience of Consciousness

Dozent/in:

Alexander Pastukhov

Angaben:

Seminar

Termine:

Mo, 10:00 - 12:00, MG2/01.11

Inhalt:

An English-language seminar course that presents our current understanding of consciousness. What is consciousness and how can we define it? We will try to answer this by looking question that philosophers raised (What is like to be a bat? Are you a philosophical zombie? Who is inside the Chinese room? What is a thought about a thought called?) We will look for missing consciousness in clinical cases (Can you see without primary visual cortex? When your arm is not your arm anymore? How many personalities can you squeeze into two hemispheres?), unconscious processing (Why cannot you see the flicker, if your V1 can? Can you pay attention to an invisible target?), free will (How do you know you did it? Why do you feel responsible, if you favorite team wins or loses?), false memory (Are you sure this happened to you at all?), and consciousness in animals (Again, what is it like to be a bat? Can animals read others’ minds?) The course is taught in English, which will allow you build vocabulary on the topic.