Paul Glimcher

Paul Glimcher
Residence New York, United States
Nationality American
Fields Neuroscience (Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuroeconomics, Systems Neuroscience)
Institutions New York University (professor)
Notable awards Margaret and Herman Sokol Faculty Award in the Sciences 2003, NYU’s Lifetime Accomplishment Teaching Award 2006.

Paul W. Glimcher is an American neuroscientist, psychologist and economist. He played a central role in developing the emerging field of neuroeconomics. He lives with his family in New York City.

Glimcher holds the Julius Silver, Rosyln S. Silver and Enid Silver Winslow Chair of Neural Science at New York University where he is Director of the New York University Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Decision Making.[1] At NYU he is a Professor of Economics, Psychology and Neural Science in the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Neuroscience and Physiology in the School of Medicine. He is the author of two books on Neuroeconomics: Neuroeconomics Decisions, Uncertainty and the Brain: The Science of Neuroeconomics and Foundations of Neuroeconomic Analysis. He is the lead editor of the textbook in Neuroeconomics, Neuroeconomics: Decision-Making and the Brain, now in its second edition.

Life and career

Paul W. Glimcher is an American scientist who has pioneered the field of Neuroeconomics, which develops and advances interdisciplinary models of human choice.[2] Glimcher’s research aims to describe the neural events that underlie behavioral decision-making using tools from economics, psychology and neuroscience. His research has made contributions to understanding how value is encoded in the brain, delay discounting and action selection in the face of both risk and ambiguity.[3] His Neuroeconomics laboratory uses a wide range of methods including cohort studies in experimental economics, brain imaging, and single neuron studies in non-human animals.

Education

In 1983, Glimcher received an A.B. magna cum laude in Neuroscience from Princeton University. In 1989 he received a Ph.D. degree in Neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania, working with the American Psychologist C. Randy Gallistel. His was the first degree in Neuroscience Awarded by the University of Pennsylvania.

After completing his doctoral research he studied as a postdoctoral fellow with the American Physiologist David L. Sparks at the University of Pennsylvania.

Professional

In 1994, he began work as an assistant professor in Neural Science at New York University. In 2000 he was promoted to the rank of associate professor.

In 2004, he founded the Center for Neuroeconomics at New York University, one of the first Centers of its kind in the world.[4] In 2008 he was promoted to the rank of full professor and in 2010 received the Silver endowed chair. In March 2014 the Center for Neuroeconomics became the Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Decision Making.

Role in the history of neuroeconomics

The field of Neuroeconomics began to develop in the late 1990s. Glimcher was instrumental in the bourgeoning of the field.[5] He published one of the first academic papers in neuroeconomics which appeared in the journal Nature in 1999 co-authored with the American Neurobiologist Michael Platt.[6] His first book, Decisions, Uncertainty and the Brain: The Science of Neuroeconomics (MIT Press) was published in 2003 and is often identified as the first book to use the word Neuroeconomics.[7] That book won the PROSE Award for Best Medical science book of 2003.[8] In 2004 he served as the founding president of the Society for Neuroeconomics as the Center for Neuroeconomics at NYU was being created. In 2009 he served as lead editor, with Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr and Russell Poldrack, of the first textbook of Neuroeconomics: Neuroeconomics Decision-Making and the Brain (2008, Elsevier). That book won the PROSE Awards for both Economics and Social Science.[9] In 2011 he published Foundations of Neuroeconomic Analysis (2011, Oxford) and in 2014, with Ernst Fehr, completed a second edition of his textbook.

Research

Glimcher’s post-doctoral training was in oculomotor physiology. Working with Professor David Sparks researching the brainstem and mesencephalic nuclei that control eye rotations, Glimcher uncovered evidence that structures participating in the execution of saccadic eye movements might be involved in planning those movements as well. Glimcher’s earlier work focused on the identification and characterization of signals that intervene between the neural processes that engage in sensory encoding and the neural processes that engage in movement generation, which underlie decision-making.

Since that time his methodologies have broadened to include techniques from experimental economics, behavioral economics, econometrics and brain imaging. His work has pioneered the notion of subjective value which is widely identified as the neurobiological correlate of economic utility.[10]

Highlights

In 1999, with Michael Platt, he was the first to demonstrate a utility-like value signal in the brain of a living creature. This finding appeared in the peer reviewed journal Nature.[11] In 2004, with Michael Dorris, he published the first experimental test of the hypothesis that the Nash Equilibrium in strategic games specifies an internal representation of value in the peer reviewed journal Neuron.[12] They found that, as hypothesized by Nash, mixed strategy equilibria emerge when the subject values of options being mixed are equivalent.

In 2005, with Hannah Bayer, he published the first quantitative test of the Dopamine Reward Prediction Error Hypothesis based on single neuron recordings from dopamine neurons and a novel kernel-based analysis in Neuron.[13] In 2007 Glimcher and Joe Kable were the first to demonstrate a clear subject value signal in the human brain that could be effectively disassociated from objective value signals. This finding was published in Nature Neuroscience.[14] In 2010, with Andrew Caplin, Mark Dean and Robb Rutledge, he published the first example of an axiomatic economic analysis applied to the neurobiology of decision-making in The Quarterly Journal of Economics.[15] This paper was also the first in a first-tier economic journal to include images of brain scans.

In 2011, with Ifat levy, Stephanie Lazzaro and Robb Rutledge, he published the first demonstration that activity patterns in the human medial prefrontal cortex, measured in the absence of choice behavior, could be used to predict later choices by the same individuals in the Journal of Neuroscience.[16] In 2013, with Kenway Louie and Mel Win Khaw, he demonstrated that efficient compressive encoding of subjective value by neurons in the brains of monkeys predicts novel anomalies in choice behavior which they subsequently observed in both monkeys and humans. These findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.[17] Overall, his research has appeared in academic journals within Economics, Psychology and Neuroscience as well as in general academic journals such as Nature, Science and the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences. He has published nearly 100 academic articles with his students and postdoctoral fellows.

Honors

Glimcher is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the McKnight, Whitehall, Klingenstein and McDonnell Foundations as well as a member of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives. He is an investigator of the National Eye Institute, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the National Institute on Aging. He has also won the Margaret and Herman Sokol Faculty Award in the Sciences in 2003 and NYU’s Distinguished (Lifetime Accomplishment) Teaching Award in 2006.

Popular press

Glimcher’s work has also been featured in the popular press such as Time,[18] Newsweek,[19] The Los Angeles Times,[20] on National Public Radio,[21] BBC,[22] Le Monde,[23] and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.[24]

Books

References

  1. ↑ "Paul Glimcher – IISDM". Neuroeconomics.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2014-02-20.
  2. ↑ Stephen S. Hall. Wisdom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 201. 79-80. Print.
  3. ↑ Glimcher, Paul. Decisions, Uncertainty, and the Brain. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003. Print; Glimcher, Paul. Foundations of Neuroeconomic Analysis. New York: Oxford, 2011. Print; Kable, J.W., and Glimcher, P.W. (2007). The neural correlates of subjective value during intertemporal choice. Nat Neuroscience. 10(12): 1625 - 1633; Levy, I., Snell, J., Nelson, A.J., Rustichini, A., and Glimcher, P.W. (2010). Neural representation of subjective value under risk and ambiguity. Journal of Neurophysiology. 103(2):1036-47
  4. ↑ Adler, Jerry. "Mind Reading". Newsweek. 5 July 2004:44-47. Print
  5. ↑ Rangel, A. (2011) How does the brain make economic decisions? Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 15:3.95-96.
  6. ↑ Platt, M.L. and Glimcher, P.W. (1999) Neural correlates of decision variables in parietal cortex. Nature. 400: 233-238
  7. ↑ Christian Scmidt (9 November 2004). "Economie et psychologie : la nouvelle alliance". Le Monde. Retrieved 2014-02-20.
  8. ↑ "Winners". PROSE Awards. Retrieved 2014-02-20.
  9. ↑ "Winners". PROSE Awards. Retrieved 2014-02-20.
  10. ↑ Robert J. Shiller (November 21, 2011). "The Neuroeconomics Revolution". Project Syndicate. Retrieved 2014-02-20.
  11. ↑ Platt, M.L. and Glimcher, P.W. (1999) Neural correlates of decision variables in parietal cortex. Nature. 400: 233-238.
  12. ↑ Dorris, M.C. and Glimcher, P.W. (2004) Activity in Posterior Parietal Cortex is Correlated with the Subjective Desirability of an Action. Neuron. 44: 365-378.
  13. ↑ Bayer, H.M. and Glimcher, P.W. (2005) Midbrain Dopamine Neurons Encode a Quantitative Reward Prediction Error Signal. Neuron. 47: 129-141.
  14. ↑ Kable, J.W., and Glimcher, P.W. (2007). The neural correlates of subjective value during intertemporal choice. Nat Neuroscience. 10(12): 1625 - 1633.
  15. ↑ Caplin, A., Dean, M., Glimcher, P.W., & Rutledge, R.B. (2010). Measuring beliefs and rewards: A neuroeconomic approach. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(3): 923-960
  16. ↑ Levy, I., Lazzaro, S., Rutledge, R.B., & Glimcher, P.W. (2011). Choice from non-choice: Predicting consumer preferences from blood oxygenation level-dependent signals obtained during passive viewing. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(1): 118-125
  17. ↑ Louie, K., Khaw, M.W., & Glimcher, P.W. (2013). Normalization is a general neural mechanism for context-dependent decision making. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 110: 6129-6144.
  18. ↑ Bill Saporito (4 March 2013). "Stocking Up". Content.time.com. Retrieved 2014-02-20.
  19. ↑ Adler, Jerry. "Mind Reading". Newsweek
  20. ↑ Eryn Brown (2 October 2012). "Teens and risky behavior: more complicated than it seems?". Articles.latimes.com. Retrieved 2014-02-20.
  21. ↑ Archived May 6, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.
  22. ↑ Tim Haford (27 October 2008). "Where economics meets neuroscience". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2014-02-20.
  23. ↑ Christian Scmidt (9 November 2004). "Economie et psychologie : la nouvelle alliance". Lemonde.fr. Retrieved 2014-02-20.
  24. ↑ Budras, Corinna (30 October 2009). "Aktienhändler denken anders". Frankfurter Allgemeine. print.
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