Economics 20 Marker

[Florian Peitz]

Somaticmarkers are physical sensations or bodily experiences that are associated with emotions and that help guide behavioral responses to situations or stimuli. They can lead to poor decision making, repeated mistakes, and risk taking when they become skewed, maladaptive, or not appropriately calibrated.

An example would be a day trader who wants to make a profit by trading a particular stock. The trader must identify the market conditions and risks involved in trading that stock. They must then gather information on the stock by analyzing its past performance and current market trends. After gathering information, the trader evaluates the alternatives, such as buying the stock or short-selling it, considering potential gains or losses. The trader makes a decision and takes action based on the evaluated alternatives.

Somatic markers are important to brand marketers because they can influence consumer behavior by creating an emotional connection with a target audience. Companies can develop positive somatic markers associated with their brand to increase brand loyalty and sales. Knowing of somatic markers, brand marketers can identify negative associations that may deter consumers from their product or improve their brand image. Ultimately, somatic markers can affect consumer decision making and drive the success of a product or brand.

Neurons are cells in the brain that communicate with each other and affect decision making through neural networks. Neural networks can create patterns that can be associated with certain stimuli and experiences, creating a memory. These memories can in turn create somatic markers, which may influence future decisions through emotions and feelings. Additionally, neurons can release neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, which affect the reward and pleasure centers of the brain and may influence decision making.

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Addiction science would benefit from the identification of a behavioral marker. A behavioral marker could reflect the projected clinical course of the disorder, function as a surrogate measure of clinical outcome, and/or may be related to biological components that underlie the disorder. In this paper we review relevant literature, made possible with the early and sustained support by NIDA, to determine whether temporal discounting, a neurobehavioral process derived from behavioral economics and further explored through neuroeconomics, may function as a behavioral marker. Our review suggests that temporal discounting 1) identifies individuals who are drug-dependent, 2) identifies those at risk of developing drug dependence, 3) acts as a gauge of addiction severity, 4) correlates with all stages of addiction development, 5) changes with effective treatment, and 6) may be related to the biological and genetic processes that underlie addiction. Thus, initial evidence supports temporal discounting as a candidate behavioral marker. Additional studies will be required in several areas for a more conclusive determination. Confirmation that temporal discounting functions as a behavioral marker for addiction could lead to 1) a screen for new treatments, 2) personalization of prevention and treatment interventions, and 3) the extension of temporal discounting as a behavioral marker for other etiologically similar disorders. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled 'NIDA 40th Anniversary Issue'.

This paper examines the influence of health conditions on academic performance during adolescence. To account for the endogeneity of health outcomes and their interactions with risky behaviors we exploit natural variation within a set of genetic markers across individuals. We present strong evidence that these genetic markers serve as valid instruments with good statistical properties for ADHD, depression and obesity. They help to reveal a new dynamism from poor health to lower academic achievement with substantial heterogeneity in their impacts across genders. Our investigation further exposes the considerable challenges in identifying health impacts due to the prevalence of comorbid health conditions and endogenous health behaviors.

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The RePEc plagiarism page Economic impact analysis of marker-assisted breeding for resistance to pests and post harvest deterioration in cassavaNderim Rudi, George Norton, Jeffrey Alwang and Godwin N. AsumughaAfrican Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 2010, vol. 04, issue 2, 13Abstract:Marker-assisted breeding could have a major impact in relieving productivity constraints that cannot as easily or rapidly be relieved by conventional breeding alone. This paper estimates the benefits of using marker-assisted breeding, as compared to conventional breeding alone, in developing cassava varieties resistant to cassava mosaic disease, green mite, whitefly and post-harvest physiological deterioration in Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda. Marker-assisted breeding is estimated to save at least four years in the breeding cycle for varieties resistant to the pests and to result in incremental net benefits over 25 years in the range of $34 to $800 million depending on the country, the particular constraint and various assumptions. Benefits may reach as high as $3 billion for resistance to post-harvest physiological deterioration, as conventional breeding is not projected to solve the problem within a reasonable time frame.Keywords: Crop; Production/Industries (search for similar items in EconPapers)

Date: 2010

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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5) Downloads: (external link)

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This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/TextPersistent link: :ags:afjare:93862DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.93862Access Statistics for this articleMore articles in African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics from African Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.

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Iowa gambling task (IGT): A psychological task, created by Antoine Bechara and his colleagues to study decision-making, which asks participants to pick from advantageous and disadvantageous card decks.2

Skin conductance response (SCR): Also referred to as a galvanic skin response or an electrodermal response, is a change in skin conductance, which occurs because of physiological arousal. It is used as a measure of somatic marker activation.1

SMH also influenced economic theory and helped catalyze the field of neuroeconomics, which attempts to explain both rational and irrational choices. Previous economic models proposed that humans are rational agents, which constantly have the mental capacity and information to maximize gains and minimize losses.6 Building on their SMH research, Bechara and Damasio proposed a neural model for economic decisions, which explains that emotions are highly important in making fast and favorable decisions.1

The hypothesis also has important implications for learning, both of humans and autonomous agents. Researchers Sid Carter and Marcia Smith Pasqualini performed the gambling task and saw varying levels of somatic marker responses in their participants.7 They found a strong correlation between the level of SCR before poor choices and successful performance in the task. Their findings suggest the SMH can predict learning in healthy populations. Some researchers believe that AI can also benefit from emotional knowledge, and are proposing methods for incorporating artificial somatic markers into autonomous agents.8

Other researchers, including Maia and McClelland, take issue with the level of awareness participants had in the gambling task10. They state that participants in the task had much more conscious knowledge of the correct decks than previously thought and therefore participants had no need for accessing unconscious markers.

Bechara and Damasio found that in addition to the vmPFC, the amygdala plays an important role in guiding decision-making with the assistance of emotions1. Read this TDL article to learn more about the amygdala, how it guides decision-making, and why awareness of this brain structure can help achieve success in negotiations.

Zebrafish has been largely accepted as a vertebrate multidisciplinary model but its usefulness as a model for exercise physiology has been hampered by the scarce knowledge on its swimming economy, optimal swimming speeds and cost of transport. Therefore, we have performed individual and group-wise swimming experiments to quantify swimming economy and to demonstrate the exercise effects on growth in adult zebrafish.

Copyright: 2010 Palstra et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: This study was supported by a grant from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacin, Spain (CSD2007-0002 to J. V. Planas). A. P. Palstra was supported by a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship from the European Commission (REPRO-SWIM) with Grant Agreement number 219971. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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