Messenger Substances in Brain Affect Strategic Decision Making
A team of psychologists and physicists from Germany have found that variations in two messenger substances in the brain affect both short and long-term strategic decision making.
For the study, the researchers homed in on two neuronal messenger substances involved in decision making- GABA and glutamate. While GABA is known to have an inhibitory role in neural transmission, glutamate is excitatory. In the study, the researchers focused on how the ratio between the two in different parts of the brain is associated with decision making.
To conduct their experiment, they recruited 29 participants. Each was presented with two kinds of decisions. One was a reward-based decision, such as choosing a coffee on the way to work depending on factors such as price, quality, and whether the cafe is on the way.
A research team of psychologists and physicists from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) and Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg investigated the neurobiological processes in different types of decision-making. In the journal