In a supermarket, for instance, we wouldn’t be able to choose between soups or potatoes without a quick read of how each option feels.

These emotional summaries allow the brain and body to be in constant feedback with each other, and this two-way flow of information allows one choice to be valued over another. She has damaged her orbito-frontal cortex, an area that is key to integrating the signals streaming in from the body, signals that tell the rest of the brain what state the body is in (hungry, nervous, excited, etc.). Dr. Eagleman reveals that, perhaps anti-intuitively, our emotional systems play a key role in driving us to make better and more humane decisions.To delve deeper into the decision-making process he visits a woman who struggles to make even the simplest decision. This conflict is born of tension between two systems in the brain, our logical lateral networks verses our emotional medial networks. One conflict that we often feel very strongly is between our rational ‘logical’ self and our emotional self. David Eagleman with a Delorean, explains that the we simulate future events in our minds is a bit like a time travel.Blink FilmsEvery decision we make is underpinned by this kind of neural conflict. As one begins to get the upper hand, it activates more and more strongly, causing the other network to be less and less active, until a threshold is crossed, the decision is made: he goes for mint.Dr. As David furrows his brow and ponders the choice before him – mint verses lemon – inside his brain, two rival networks are fighting it out.

We start with a simple one: choosing a flavor of frozen yogurt, and learn that every decision we make is born of a ‘winner takes all’ competition between rival neural networks. ‘How do I decide?’ is a journey through the unseen world of decisions, and how they get made.

The human brain is the most complex object we’ve discovered in the universe, and every day much of its neural circuitry is taken up with the tens of thousands of decisions we need to make. Learn how the brain navigates the tens of thousands of conscious decisions we make every day and the many more unconscious decisions we make about everything from whom we find attractive to what we perceive.

The brain by david eagleman