Paul W. Glimcher (born November 3, 1961) is an American neuroeconomist, neuroscientist, psychologist, economist, scholar, and entrepreneur. He is one of the foremost researchers focused on the study of human behavior and decision-making and is known for his central role in founding and developing the field of neuroeconomics. Glimcher also founded the Institute for the Study of Decision Making at New York University (NYU). Today he serves as Chair of the Department of Neuroscience[1] and Director of the Neurosciences Institute at NYU's Grossman School of Medicine.
Glimcher holds the Julius Silver, Rosyln S. Silver, and Enid Silver Winslow Chair of Neural Science at NYU in the College of Arts and Sciences, where he also holds professorial appointments in Economics and Psychology, and in Neuroscience and Physiology in NYU School of Medicine. He is also the founder of the HUMAN Project, a large-scale interdisciplinary longitudinal study, and Datacubed Health, a start-up company focused on developing and marketing new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technologies in the healthcare industry and biomedical/behavioral research domain.
In addition to the many books and scholarly papers he's written in the field of neuroeconomics, he is the lead editor of the textbook, Neuroeconomics: Decision-Making and the Brain, now in its second edition.
Early life and education
Paul W. Glimcher was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Arne and Mildred Glimcher. His father, Arne Glimcher, was the founder of the renowned New York City-based Pace Gallery, the second largest private art gallery in the world.[2] Not as artistically inclined as his father and the family business, Paul Glimcher was interested in science and technology from an early age.
Growing up in New York City, Glimcher attended the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan. 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,[3] studying under the American psychologist, C. Randy Gallistel. Glimcher's was the first doctoral degree in neuroscience awarded by the University of Pennsylvania.[4]
Glimcher's post-doctoral training was in oculomotor physiology. Working with Professor David Sparks (University of Pennsylvania) 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, most notably pioneering the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) for behavioral research. His work has pioneered the notion of subjective value, which is widely identified as the neurobiological correlate of economic utility.[5]
Career and role in founding Neuroeconomics
In 1994, Glimcher began work as an assistant professor in Neural Science at New York University. In 2001, he was promoted to associate professor of Neural Science and Psychology.
In 2004, he founded the Center for Neuroeconomics at New York University, one of the first research centers ever dedicated to the field.[6] In 2006, Glimcher became an associate professor in economics in addition to his postings in neural science and psychology, and in 2008 was promoted to full Professor of Neural Science, Economics, and Psychology. In 2010, Glimcher became the Silver Endowed Chair in Neural Science.[7] In March 2014, the Center for Neuroeconomics became the Institute for the Study of Decision Making, reporting directly to NYU's Provost.
The field of neuroeconomics began to develop in the late 1990s as a natural out-growth of the maturation of many different disciplines––such as neuroscience, psychology, and economics––happening all at once. Glimcher was instrumental in facilitating the development of the bourgeoning of the field by recognizing these trends and understanding that future groundbreaking behavioral science research would require an interdisciplinary approach to overcome the inherent research limitations of any one discipline.[8] He co-authored what is often referred to as the first academic paper in neuroeconomics, with American neurobiologist, Michael Platt, which was published in the journal Nature in 1999.[9] 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.[10] That book won the PROSE Award for Best Medical Science Book of 2003.[11]
In 2004, he founded the Center for Neuroeconomics at NYU––the first such research entity devoted to the field––while also serving as the founding president of the Society for Neuroeconomics. The Center for Neuroeconomics became the Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Decision Making in 2014 and Institute for the Study of Decision Making in 2017.
In 2009 he served as lead editor along with Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, and Russell Poldrack of the first textbook dedicated to the discipline of neuroeconomics: Neuroeconomics Decision-Making and the Brain (2008, Elsevier). That book won the 2009 PROSE Award for Excellence in the [Economic and] Social Sciences.[12] In 2011, he published Foundations of Neuroeconomic Analysis (2011, Oxford) and, in 2014 with Ernst Fehr, completed a second edition of this textbook.
The HUMAN Project
After starting up the Institute for the Study of Decision Making in 2014, Glimcher––working with Miyoung Chun of The Kavli Foundation––also began the development of a new interdisciplinary longitudinal study sponsored by The Kavli Foundation, called the Kavli HUMAN Project. One of his signature achievements, the Kavli HUMAN Project is a “big human data” research platform that took its inspiration from big data surveys in other disciplines, in particular the astronomy community's Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The survey will study tens of thousands of Americans for decades, much like past longitudinal studies––such as the Framingham Heart Study––except that the scope of measurements and disciplines covered by The HUMAN Project eclipse any past biomedical or behavioral research longitudinal study.[13]
Datacubed Health LLC
In 2016, in light of governmental fiscal austerity for basic research at all levels, Glimcher founded Human Project Inc., then an NYU incubator company established to develop the foundational technologies used by The HUMAN Project and commercialize those technologies to generate revenue which can in turn sustain the long-term operation of The HUMAN Project, whose funding is supplemented by limited Federal and philanthropic funding. Now called Datacubed Healthcare, its product is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), which can enable new methods of data analytics for large-scale datasets; conducting clinical or basic biomedical/behavioral research; and recruiting and retaining human research subjects. Today Datacubed health sells its product to Pharma and CROs. Glimcher is currently the CSO of Datacubed Health.
Research
Glimcher's research aims to describe the neural events that underlie behavioral decision-making using tools from neuroscience, psychology, and economics. His research merges psychological and economic models with computational neuroscience, including pioneering uses of fMRI (function magnetic resonance imaging) for behavioral science, to understand how value is encoded in the brain and how the brain uses those neural representations of value to guide decision-making; for example, how the brain carries out delay discounting or action-selection in the face of both risk and ambiguity. His laboratory in NYU's Center for Neural Science uses a wide range of methods including cohort studies in experimental economics, brain imaging, and single-neuron studies in non-human animals.[14]
His most notable contributions are in: the development of the field of neuroeconomics; studies of dopamine and reinforcement learning; elucidating the neurobiological basis of human preferences; how people make intertemporal choices; and pioneering the application of “normalized representation” to decision-making.
In 1999, with neuroscientist, Michael Platt, Glimcher 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.[9] 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.[15] They found that, as hypothesized by Nash, mixed strategy equilibria emerge when the subject values of options being mixed are equivalent.
Glimcher's laboratory has conducted extensive research on the brain's reward system, in particular the dopamine system and reinforcement learning. 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.[16]
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.[17] 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.[18] 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.[19] 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.[20]
In 2016, Glimcher and co-authors explained how a preexisting survey-based methodology for valuing public environmental goods (e.g. public parks)––“Contingent Valuation”––could be refined with a neuro-economical approach. Glimcher et al. incorporated fMRI measurements to contrast with the outputs of traditional contingent valuation. Their research showed that the way people value environmental public goods differs on a neurobiological level from “neural activity associated with previously examined goods and preference measures”.[21] In other words, people value environmental goods differently from other tangible goods, like food or clothing. While further research is required in this line of inquiry, the research could influence public policy and how scientists communicate with the public about dangers posed to the environment and/or shared resources.[22]
Overall, Glimcher's research has appeared in academic journals in the fields of economics, psychology, neuroscience, as well as in general scholarly journals such as Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences. He has published nearly 100 academic articles with colleagues, postdoctoral fellows, and students.[23]
The Kavli HUMAN Project is Glimcher's signature research project, combining almost all of the elements of his research over the past three decades.
His 2009 textbook on neuroeconomics received the American Association of Publishers PROSE Award for Excellence in the Social Sciences.[12]
Glimcher, as an active member of the scientific community, also plays a prominent role with the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, where he has served on numerous advisory boards and research study committees operated by the Academies, including:
Presenter to the Social and Behavioral Sciences Decadal Survey (2016);[24]
Committee on Making the Soldier Decision on Future Battlefields (2013);[25]
Committee on Opportunities in Neuroscience for Future Army Applications (2009);[26]
Two terms on the Army Research Lab Technical Assessment Board.
Glimcher, Paul W. (2003). Decisions, Uncertainty, and the Brain. A Bradford Book. ISBN978-0262072441.
Neuroeconomics: Decision Making and the Brain. 2008. ISBN978-0123741769.
Glimcher, Paul W. (2011). Foundations of Neuroeconomic Analysis. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN978-0199744251.
Glimcher, Paul W. (2013). Neuroeconomics: Decision Making and the Brain. Academic Press. ISBN978-0124160088.
Related Research Articles
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system, its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmental biology, cytology, psychology, physics, computer science, chemistry, medicine, statistics, and mathematical modeling to understand the fundamental and emergent properties of neurons, glia and neural circuits. The understanding of the biological basis of learning, memory, behavior, perception, and consciousness has been described by Eric Kandel as the "epic challenge" of the biological sciences.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to neuroscience:
Neuroeconomics is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to explain human decision-making, the ability to process multiple alternatives and to follow through on a plan of action. It studies how economic behavior can shape our understanding of the brain, and how neuroscientific discoveries can guide models of economics.
Behavioral neuroscience, also known as biological psychology, biopsychology, or psychobiology, is part of the broad, interdisciplinary field of neuroscience, with its primary focus being on the biological and neural mechanisms underlying behavior. Cognitive neuroscience is similar to behavioral neuroscience, in that both fields study the neurobiological functions related to psychology, as in experiences and behaviors. Behavioral neuroscientists examine the biological bases of behavior through research that involves neuroanatomical substrates, environmental and genetic factors, effects of lesions and electrical stimulation, developmental processes, recording electrical activity, neurotransmitters, hormonal influences, chemical components, and the effects of drugs. Important topics of consideration for neuroscientific research in behavior include learning and memory, sensory processes, motivation and emotion, as well as genetic and molecular substrates concerning the biological bases of behavior.
Dopaminergic pathways in the human brain are involved in both physiological and behavioral processes including movement, cognition, executive functions, reward, motivation, and neuroendocrine control. Each pathway is a set of projection neurons, consisting of individual dopaminergic neurons.
Behavioural science is the branch of science concerned with human behaviour. While the term can technically be applied to the study of behaviour amongst all living organisms, it is nearly always used with reference to humans as the primary target of investigation. The behavioural sciences sit in between the conventional natural sciences and social studies in terms of scientific rigor. It encompasses fields such as psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, and economics.
The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is a prefrontal cortex region in the frontal lobes of the brain which is involved in the cognitive process of decision-making. In non-human primates it consists of the association cortex areas Brodmann area 11, 12 and 13; in humans it consists of Brodmann area 10, 11 and 47.
Salience is the property by which some thing stands out. Salient events are an attentional mechanism by which organisms learn and survive; those organisms can focus their limited perceptual and cognitive resources on the pertinent subset of the sensory data available to them.
The reward system is a group of neural structures responsible for incentive salience, associative learning, and positively-valenced emotions, particularly ones involving pleasure as a core component. Reward is the attractive and motivational property of a stimulus that induces appetitive behavior, also known as approach behavior, and consummatory behavior. A rewarding stimulus has been described as "any stimulus, object, event, activity, or situation that has the potential to make us approach and consume it is by definition a reward". In operant conditioning, rewarding stimuli function as positive reinforcers; however, the converse statement also holds true: positive reinforcers are rewarding.The reward system motivates animals to approach stimuli or engage in behaviour that increases fitness. Survival for most animal species depends upon maximizing contact with beneficial stimuli and minimizing contact with harmful stimuli. Reward cognition serves to increase the likelihood of survival and reproduction by causing associative learning, eliciting approach and consummatory behavior, and triggering positively-valenced emotions. Thus, reward is a mechanism that evolved to help increase the adaptive fitness of animals. In drug addiction, certain substances over-activate the reward circuit, leading to compulsive substance-seeking behavior resulting from synaptic plasticity in the circuit.
Pendleton Read Montague, Jr. is an American neuroscientist and popular science author. He is the director of the Human Neuroimaging Lab and Computational Psychiatry Unit at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC in Roanoke, Virginia, where he also holds the title of the inaugural Virginia Tech Carilion Vernon Mountcastle Research Professor. Montague is also a professor in the department of physics at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia and professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine.
Ann Martin Graybiel is an Institute Professor and a faculty member in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. She is an expert on the basal ganglia and the neurophysiology of habit formation, implicit learning, and her work is relevant to Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, obsessive–compulsive disorder, substance abuse and other disorders that affect the basal ganglia.
Tania Singer is a German psychologist and social neuroscientist and the scientific director of the Max Planck Society's Social Neuroscience Lab in Berlin, Germany. Between 2007 and 2010, she became the inaugural chair of social neuroscience and neuroeconomics at the University of Zurich and was the co-director of the Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research in Zurich. Her research focuses on the developmental, neuronal, and hormonal mechanisms underlying human social behavior and social emotions such as compassion and empathy. She is founder and principal investigator of the ReSource project, one of the largest longitudinal studies on the effects of mental training on brain plasticity as well as mental and physical health, co-funded by the European Research Council. She also collaborates with the macro-economist Dennis Snower on research on caring economics. Singer's Caring Economics: Conversations on Altruism and Compassion, Between Scientists, Economists, and the Dalai Lama was published in 2015. She is the daughter of the neuroscientist Wolf Singer.
Neuromanagement uses cognitive neuroscience, among other life science fields, and technology to analyze economic and managerial issues. It focuses on exploring human brain activities and mental processes when people are faced with typical problems of economics and management. This research provides insight into human decision-making and other general social behavior. The main research areas include decision neuroscience, neuroeconomics, neuromarketing, neuro-industrial engineering, and neuro-information systems. Neuromanagement was first proposed in 2006 by Professor Qingguo Ma, the director of Neuromanagement Laboratory of Zhejiang University.
Russell "Russ" Alan Poldrack is an American psychologist and neuroscientist. He is a professor of psychology at Stanford University, associate director of Stanford Data Science, member of the Stanford Neuroscience Institute and director of the Stanford Center for Reproducible Neuroscience and the SDS Center for Open and Reproducible Science.
Peter L. Bossaerts is a Belgian-American economist. He is considered one of the pioneers and leading researchers in neuroeconomics and experimental finance. He is Professor of Neuroeconomics at the University of Cambridge.
Giorgio Coricelli is professor of economics and psychology at the University of Southern California, specializing in neuroeconomics. Having done his undergraduate studies at La Sapienza in Rome, he then completed his Ph.D. at the Economic Science Laboratory of the University of Arizona studying with Vernon Smith, shortly before Smith received his Nobel Prize in economics in 2002.
Carlos Alós-Ferrer is a neuroeconomist, decision theorist, and game theorist, a full professor of economics at Lancaster University (U.K.), and the current editor in chief of the Journal of Economic Psychology. He is also a regular contributor to Psychology Today, where he writes about Decisions and the Brain.
Ilana B. Witten is an American neuroscientist and professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University. Witten studies the mesolimbic pathway, with a focus on the striatal neural circuit mechanisms driving reward learning and decision making.
Aldo Rustichini is an Italian-born American economist, academic and researcher. He is a professor of economics at University of Minnesota, where is also associated with the Interdisciplinary Center for Cognitive Sciences.
Wolfram Schultz is a Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge known for his discovery of the neurophysiological dopamine reward signal.
↑ 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
↑ 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.
↑ Bayer, H.M. and Glimcher, P.W. (2005) Midbrain Dopamine Neurons Encode a Quantitative Reward Prediction Error Signal. Neuron. 47: 129-141.
↑ Kable, J.W., and Glimcher, P.W. (2007). The neural correlates of subjective value during intertemporal choice. Nat Neuroscience. 10(12): 1625 - 1633.
↑ 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
↑ 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
↑ 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.
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