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The Incentives Lab
The Brain Atlas · Incentive Intelligence

This is what your brain is doing when no one's looking.

The 1229 patterns in this Atlas — every bias, fallacy, perverse incentive, AI dynamic, and mental model — all run on the same three pounds of tissue. Click any region to see what it controls, the concepts it produces, and how it lands in your day.

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Amygdala
Ten regions · 1229 concepts
Guided tour · 30 minutes

Your first 30 minutes inside the brain.

Six 5-minute stops through the regions that explain most of human behavior. Each stop links to the named patterns it produces — so you walk out with vocabulary, not just intuition.

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Stop 1 of 6 · Threat

Amygdala

Threat fires first. If you don't see the alarm, you can't think past it.

What it does: Threat detection, fear, social pain, loss aversion, fast emotional tagging.

Open region on Atlas →
Read these 3 terms (5 min)
Try this

Notice one moment this week when you flinched before you reasoned.

Connectome · Interactive map

The wiring diagram between regions and the patterns they produce.

Hover or click any region to see how it connects to its neighbors — then jump straight to the named patterns it produces.

10 regions · 14 links
reward learninghabit vs. choicePrefrontalExecutiveACCConflictAmygdalaThreatInsulaGutHippocampusMemoryStriatumRewardDopamineWantingParietalAttentionDefault ModeSelfBrainstemArousalTap a regionStriatum & Nucleus Accumbens
How to read the Atlas

Three pounds. Ten regions. Every pattern you've ever named.

01 · Diagnose

Find the region.

When something feels off — a meeting that went sideways, a decision you regret, a habit you can't break — start by asking which region is firing. Threat? Reward? Story?

02 · Name

Find the pattern.

Each region surfaces the named patterns it produces. Loss aversion, sunk cost, hyperbolic discounting — these aren't abstractions. They are predictable outputs of specific tissue.

03 · Design

Design around it.

Once you know which circuit is in play, you stop arguing with it and start engineering for it. Defaults, cues, frames, environment — that's the work.

Diagnose
Map your brain to your week →

15-minute III Assessment.

Learn
Master the operating system →

12-week Executive Course.

Go deeper
Join the Lab →

Members get the full Atlas, briefings, and case archive.

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