Contributions in Merlin

In goal-directed decision-making, animals choose between actions that are associated with different reward outcomes (e.g., foods) and with different costs (e.g., effort). Rapid advances have been made over the past few years in our understanding of the computations associated with goal-directed choices, and of how those computations are implemented in the brain. We review some important findings, with an emphasis on computational models, human fMRI, and monkey neurophysiology studies.

Little is known about the neurobiological mechanisms underlying prosocial decisions and how they are modulated by social factors such as perceived group membership. The present study investigates the neural processes preceding the willingness to engage in costly helping toward ingroup and outgroup members. Soccer fans witnessed a fan of their favorite team (ingroup member) or of a rival team (outgroup member) experience pain. They were subsequently able to choose to help the other by enduring physical pain themselves to reduce the other's pain. Helping the ingroup member was best predicted by anterior insula activation when seeing him suffer and by associated self-reports of empathic concern. In contrast, not helping the outgroup member was best predicted by nucleus accumbens activation and the degree of negative evaluation of the other. We conclude that empathy-related insula activation can motivate costly helping, whereas an antagonistic signal in nucleus accumbens reduces the propensity to help.

Cognitive processes, such as spatial attention, are thought to rely on extended networks in the human brain. Both clinical data from lesioned patients and fMRI data acquired when healthy subjects perform particular cognitive tasks typically implicate a wide expanse of potentially contributing areas, rather than just a single brain area. Conversely, evidence from more targeted interventions, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) or invasive microstimulation of the brain, or selective study of patients with highly focal brain damage, can sometimes indicate that a single brain area may make a key contribution to a particular cognitive process. But this in turn raises questions about how such a brain area may interface with other interconnected areas within a more extended network to support cognitive processes. Here, we provide a brief overview of new approaches that seek to characterise the causal role of particular brain areas within networks of several interacting areas, by measuring the effects of manipulations for a targeted area on function in remote interconnected areas. In human participants, these approaches include concurrent TMS-fMRI and TMS-EEG, as well as combination of the focal lesion method in selected patients with fMRI and/or EEG measures of the functional impact from the lesion on interconnected intact brain areas. Such approaches shed new light on how frontal cortex and parietal cortex modulate sensory areas in the service of attention and cognition, for the normal and damaged human brain.

The object of our study is a better understanding of the difference between cultural value and economic value, and of the process through which a change in the cultural value of an item changes the economic valuation of that item. Cette contribution analyse la dynamique relative de la valeur artistique ou culturelle et de la valeur économique des œuvres d’art, notamment la manière dont l’évolution de la valeur culturelle d’une œuvre influence ou non dans le temps sa valeur économique. Dans certains domaines, la valeur culturelle est relativement ignorée par les économistes parce qu’elle ne semble guère influencer les prix de vente correspondants. Mais de manière générale, il existe des raisons pour considérer que ces deux types de valeur évoluent de manière liée. Pour cela l’histoire économique de trois tableaux célèbres est examinée, ce qui montre le rôle important de l’évolution de la valeur culturelle pour expliquer celui de la valeur culturelle. La « Vierge des roses » de Raphaël montre comment l’augmentation de la valeur culturelle a ici entrainé l’augmentation de sa valeur économique. « L’homme au casque d’or » de Rembrandt témoigne de l’évolution inverse. Enfin, « Numéro 12, 1949 » de Jason Pollock illustre leur codétermination progressive. De tels exemples doivent être considérés comme une première analyse empirique d’un nouveau territoire scientifique.

Over the last decades, empirical research on subjective well-being in the social sciences has provided a major new stimulation of the discourse on individual happiness. Recently this research has also been linked to economics where reported subjective wellbeing is often taken as a proxy measure for individual welfare. In our review, we intend to provide an evaluation of where the economic research on happiness stands and of three directions it might develop. First, it offers new ways for testing the basic assumptions of the economic approach and for going about a new understanding of utility. Second, it provides a new possibility for the complementary testing of theories across fields in economics. Third, we inquire how the insights gained from the study of individual happiness in economics affect public policy.

Kernstück des 2009 eingeführten Gesundheitsfonds ist die Einführung des morbiditätsorientierten Risikostrukturausgleichs. Die Einführung des so genannten Morbi-RSA hatte erhebliche Auswirkungen auf die Wettbewerbsposition der Krankenkassen und die finanziellen Anreize zur Weiterentwicklung von Versorgungsstrukturen. In diesem Band des Jahrbuch liegt der Schwerpunkt auf der Weiterentwicklung des Morbi-RSA. Die Herausgeber des Jahrbuchs Risikostrukturausgleich 2009/10 haben daher namhafte Autoren aus Wissenschaft und Praxis eingeladen, dieses Thema aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven zu beleuchten.

We discuss a class of copula-based ordered probit models with endogenous switching. Such models can be useful for the analysis of self-selection in subjective well-being equations in general, and job satisfaction in particular, where assignment of regressors may be endogenous rather than random, resulting from individual maximization of well-being. In an application to public and private sector job satisfaction, and using data on male workers from the German Socio-Economic Panel for 2004, and using two alternative copula functions for dependence, we find consistent evidence for endogenous sector selection.

Combining transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with concurrent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allows study of how local brain stimulation may causally affect activity in remote brain regions. Here, we applied bursts of high- or low-intensity TMS over right posterior parietal cortex, during a task requiring sustained covert visuospatial attention to either the left or right hemifield, or in a neutral control condition, while recording blood oxygenation-level-dependent signal with a posterior MR surface coil. As expected, the active attention conditions activated components of the well-described "attention network," as compared with the neutral baseline. Also as expected, when comparing left minus right attention, or vice versa, contralateral occipital visual cortex was activated. The critical new finding was that the impact of high- minus low-intensity parietal TMS upon these visual regions depended on the currently attended side. High- minus low-intensity parietal TMS increased the difference between contralateral versus ipsilateral attention in right extrastriate visual cortex. A related albeit less pronounced pattern was found for left extrastriate visual cortex. Our results confirm that right human parietal cortex can exert attention-dependent influences on occipital visual cortex and provide a proof of concept for the use of concurrent TMS-fMRI in studying how remote influences can vary in a purely top-down manner with attentional demands.

In many countries, TV viewers have access to more and more TV channels. We study whether people can cope with this and watch the amount of TV they find optimal for themselves, or whether they are prone to over-consumption. We find that heavy TV viewers do not benefit, but instead report lower life satisfaction with access to more TV channels. This finding runs counter to the standard economic prediction that a larger choice set does not make people worse off. It suggests that an identifiable group of persons experience a self-control problem when it comes to TV viewing.