Neuroscience
Decision architecture at the level of circuits, neurotransmitters, and prediction error.
What neural circuit is being activated or hijacked?
Canonical thinkers
- Karl Friston
- Antonio Damasio
- Lisa Feldman Barrett
- Stephen Porges
Seed concepts
- system 1
- system 2
- default mode
- executive function
- dopamine
- serotonin
- oxytocin
- noradrenaline
- norepinephrine
- prediction error
- reward learning
- bayesian brain
- active inference
- neuroplasticity
- polyvagal
- salience network
- attention network
- working memory
- amygdala
- prefrontal
- neuro
Underlined seeds link to their full glossary entry. Plain seeds are pending a definition page.
Typed connections
Full graph →How this layer reinforces, counteracts, or depends on the rest of the system.
- Depends on·LayerBehavioral Economics depends on this layer
Biases like loss aversion bottom out in dopaminergic and amygdala circuitry — neuroscience supplies the mechanism BE describes.
- Explains·LayerThis layer explains Behavioral Economics
Reward prediction error and threat response explain why heuristics fire the way Kahneman & Tversky catalogued them.
- Explains·HBEThis layer explains Loss Aversion
Amygdala activation to potential losses is roughly twice the ventral striatum response to equivalent gains.
Elements in this layer
95 HBEsThe minimum energy needed to start a reaction; same idea for starting habits or initiatives.
Naming an emotion reduces its intensity.
Cumulative physiological wear from chronic stress.
Emotional override of rational processing.
Brain region tracking conflict, error, and effort.
We treat AI as more humanlike than it is.
Attention is the most contested resource in modern work.
Task switches leave cognitive residue that degrades performance.
Self-direction is one of the deepest motivational levers.
Willpower fails; structure works.
Boredom triggers creative wandering.
The mind can be socially influenced toward conclusions that bypass scrutiny.
How options are presented changes which ones get chosen.
Too many options produces worse decisions and less satisfaction.
Cognitive performance varies predictably with circadian rhythm.
Most biases are efficient heuristics misapplied.
Working memory has limits.
Working memory has limits.
Outsourcing thinking to tools shifts what we remember and learn.
Pausing System 1 to engage System 2.
Stress hormone with cognitive and immune-system consequences.
Familiar information feels true.
Decision quality degrades over the course of a day.
Defaults bypass active cognition.
Brain network active during rest and mind-wandering — and during creative insight.
Glucose, omega-3s, sleep, and hydration each influence decision quality.
Multitasking measurably degrades performance.
Neurotransmitter of anticipation, not pleasure.
Two ways of thinking, both real, both useful, often mis-deployed.
System 1 is fast, automatic, intuitive; System 2 is slow, effortful, deliberate.
Self-control draws from a limited daily pool. (Contested in lab; observed in life.)
Thinking happens through the body, not despite it.
The whole has properties that the individual parts do not.
Emotions spread through groups via micro-cues.
Empathy: feel with. Compassion: act for. Different neural circuits.
Time is fixed; energy is not. Manage the renewable.
The brain minimizes effort by default — most cognition is on cruise control.
People, tasks, and inputs that quietly drain disproportionate energy relative to value returned.
Ranking systems trained on engagement amplify outrage, fear, and tribal content.
Aerobic exercise measurably improves executive function.
Doing something for an external reward.
Neurological state of peak performance and engagement.
Two modes the brain alternates between.
Living systems minimize surprise to survive.
The deepest level of listening — where new possibility emerges that neither party brought into the room.
Believing abilities can be developed.
Cue → routine → reward.
New habits anchored to existing ones stick faster.
Repeated stimuli produce diminishing response.
Neurons that fire together wire together.
We return to a baseline of well-being after gains or losses.
Threats to identity activate strong defensive responses.
Subjective feeling of not deserving one's success.
Brain region tracking internal state and gut feeling.
Doing something because the doing is the reward.
Neural mechanism of learning — connections strengthened by repeated activation.
Loss processed more intensely than equivalent gain.
The drive to get better at things that matter.
Memories are reconstructed each time we recall them, not retrieved intact.
Neurons that fire both when acting and when observing the action.
Showing the first 60 of 95. Full graph view coming in Phase 2.