Election Day: The Brain Science of Making Decisions
(Originally published by the Zuckerman Institute at Columbia University)
November 1, 2018
It's election time again. Time for everyone in this country to cast their ballots and decide who will represent them. And decisions are what Michael Shadlen, a neuroscientist at Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute, studies.
Dr. Shadlen says that when choosing which candidate to vote for, your brain secretly does math. And he's discovered many of these computations by exploring how our brains ask questions about the world.
So on Tuesday, when you join millions in voting, take a moment to ask yourself: How did my brain make this decision?