For promoting the interdisciplinary studies of neuroscience and social sciences, the Symposium, jointly hosted by Zhejiang University, Zhejiang University School of Management and Zhejiang University Laboratory of Neuromanagement, was held in Hangzhou on 27^th and 28^th October. The emerging two new research fields: Neuroeconomics and Neuromanagement seem to announce that the epoch of interpreting social sciences and expanding the traditional disciplines by studying the cranial nerves has come.

Ever-growing Studies on Neuroeconomics  

The concept of Neuroeconomics was initiated by a professor from GeorgeMasonUniversity in 1996. In 2002, Vernon Smith, Nobel Prize Laureate on economics, delivered a speech entitled “Constructivist and Ecological Rationality in Economics” on the Nobel Prize Award Presentation Ceremony, proposing that the new brain image technology stimulated the neuroeconomic studies to probe into the inner order of the brain as well as the relationship between its inner order and human decision-making, which began to attract more researchers in this regard.

Professor Zhou Xiaolin at Department of Psychology, Beijing University said that, neuroeconomics, as new interdisciplinary studies, aimed to explore how the brain, while making complicated decisions, tried to calculate, how to calculate and what the knowledge meant to individual behaviors; meanwhile, it explored a more accurate and perfect decision-making model by drawing references from the fruits in psychology, neuroscience and economics. In a word, neuroeconomics tried to discover whether economics played a role, how it played a role by understanding the physiological structure of the brain.

Decision-making has long been a heated topic in economics, psychology and neuroscience. However, the economists neglected the details of the brain and the influence of psychology upon the individual economic behaviors, and thus a rational selection model was obtained. But it could not explain many “bizarre phenomena”, because while carrying out actual decisions, people were confined by many “irrational” factors.

The Start of Neuromanagement in China

Neuromanagement was initiated by Ma Qingguo, Director of Zhejiang University Laboratory of Neuromanagement. Ma Qingguo said that, since the management targets included the human system, or the information that the system cared was the result of human activities, which had certain connections with brain activities, so it was possible to decide the neural activities of the client’s behaviors from studying the nerve cells, which led to the studies of neuromanagement.

Ma Qingguo also said neuromanagement at least should include neuro-decision-making, neuro-marketing, neuro-talent management, neuro-industrial engineering, behavioral neuroscience, neuro-finance, and neuro-entrepreneurship, etc. The similarities between neuromanagement and neuroeconomics are that both take the neuro-studies of behaviors as their cores, while the differences lie in that, the former aims at studying the evolution principles of management targets in different time and spatial conditions while emphasizing the actual conditions, individual differences and operations, and the latter aims at studying the general rule evaluated by currency in the human society with the presuppositions of “self-interest” and “maximal profit of producers”.

At present, the first national Laboratory of Neuromanagement has been set up in ZhejiangUniversity and it is carrying out several key projects in Natural Science Foundation of China. The international symposium of “Neuromanagement and Neuroeconomics” started in 2009 has been a key academic exchange platform in these fields. Researchers on economic management and other relevant social sciences are working hard at that.  

Prospects about New Interdisciplinary Studies

Neuroscience will pay more attention to the studies on perception, behavior, memory, language and selective attention, so it will extend to neuro-medicine and physiology and in addition, it will develop in cross-disciplinary studies of psychology, sociology, economics and management.

However, some experts pointed out, as new interdisciplinary studies, neuroeconomics and neuromanagement had not established their theoretical systems and analytical frameworks, and the knowledge from the other fields, e.g. neuroscience, economics, management, sociology and psychology should be absorbed.

Neuroeconomics will explore the mysteries of individual economic behaviors, while neuroscience will analyze the new technology for the brain behaviors and provide new information sources for management.

     Xie Fang, Issue 374, November 2, 2012, Chinese Social SciencesWeekly