Ep8 "How does your brain decide what to buy?"

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman

iHeartPodcasts

Mental Health, Science, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness, Education

4.6 • 524 Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What’s happening when you stand in the supermarket aisle and stare at the shelf full of options? It may not look like there’s much going on from the outside, but inside there’s a war of networks raging. How is your brain's decision-making influenced by price, emotions, and your group of friends? How would you choose between a nice candle and a chocolate bar in the shape of a computer keyboard? And what does any of this have to do with Starbucks or Tiger Woods or Burger King?

Transcript

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0:00.0	So what's happening in your brain when you stand at the ice cream aisle at the store
0:10.5	and you stare at all the different options?
0:13.6	It doesn't look like there's a lot going on there, but inside there is a war of brain networks that are raging.
0:21.6	So how does your brain make its decision about what it's going to buy?
0:26.6	And how is that influenced by price, by your emotions, by your group of friends?
0:32.6	How do you decide whether you'd rather have a chocolate bar in the shape of a computer keyboard or a nice
0:40.5	candle with an integrated matchstick holder? And what does this have to do with Starbucks or
0:45.3	Tiger Woods or Burger King? Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me, David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University,
0:57.7	and in these episodes, we sail deeply into our three-pound universe to understand why and how
1:05.0	our lives look the way they do.
1:14.2	Today's episode is the second part of a three-part series.
1:18.7	We're looking at how the brain is a machine built of networks that live in conflict.
1:25.6	In the last episode, we saw that your brain is a team of rivals.
1:31.0	You have different networks with potentially opposing opinions, and they all compete to steer the ship of state.
1:39.5	And today, we're going to see how these rivaling networks determine how we decide what to buy,
1:46.6	like which ice cream brand or which car brand. How much should something cost? How do you
1:52.7	get steered or manipulated by emotions? And does it matter if your friends think something is
1:59.2	cool or lame? We're going to see how an
2:01.7	understanding of the brain exposes how we make our daily decisions. As we found out in the last
2:09.1	episode, different networks in your brain care about different things. And brain scientists all
2:15.2	over the world have used imaging technologies to see what the brain is up to when we are faced with decisions, like decisions about which fast food restaurant you're going to choose on the block or which shirt to buy or which internet service provider you're going to sign up with.
2:35.0	So let's start with the field of economics. All of us who studied some economics in college
	...

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