Philippe Damier is a professor of neurology at the teaching hospital of Nantes. His research work — carried out at Salpêtrière Hospital, in Paris, at Boston’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in Nantes — focuses on neurodegenerative diseases and aims to define the cellular mechanisms that cause them, and to propose new treatments.

We are constantly making decisions, from the most banal (selecting the sandwich we’ll have for lunch) to the most complex (choosing a career). Some decisions are made quickly with little awareness on our part of the underlying process. Others are the fruit of lengthy, fully conscious and controlled efforts. Some decisions are made alone, others in twos or in a group. In each case before reaching a decision one or more human beings — actually their brains — synthesised a large amount of information: information gleaned from the immediate environment, internal information on the state of the organism, memories of more or less similar prior experiences which the decision-maker may or not be consciously aware of. After the information is integrated, a decision is made that results in a certain behaviour. How does the human brain proceed in such situations? What do we know about the cerebral structures that participate in the decision-making process? How do they work? Does your brain always make the decision that is in your best interests? Can the brain make mistakes?

• Assessment of criteria, internal value scale, role of previous experiences, learning, intuition, the role of dopamine, priming phenomena, mirror neurons: by following the pathways of the cerebral structures implicated in such processes we will acquire a better understanding of what happens in the brain during the decision-making process.
• Practical tips to avoid some of the common pitfalls of decision-makers. How to optimise the decision-making process.