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Lose that “old brain, new brain” stuff

Lisa Feldman Barrett along with others such as Tor Wager lead the world in the science of emotion. Last year she published a meta-analysis of all of the neuroimaging (brain pictures) studies on emotion. While to a researcher, the work certainly generates more questions than it resolves, to us laypeople trader types there is one salient point – emotion and cognition or feeling and thinking DO NOT happen in two separate parts of the brain. In fact, it is fair to say that what are known as sub-cortical and cortical (cortex) regions work together in all sorts of emotional experiences.

Why does it matter to trading success? Two reasons – just more proof that any effort at controlling emotions is wasted and more importantly, just more proof that learning how to leverage emotional data – both as a risk management tool and as a tactical judgment factor is an investment that will pay off in spades (and trades).

See “Kober et.al. 2008 Functional Networks ….” (hey it is my blog, I don’t have to follow the science reference syntax!)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Emotion Analytics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Lose that “old brain, new brain” stuff”

  1. colin abrams says:
    May 16, 2009 at 4:04 pm

    I must say i am finding your stuff pretty revolutionary. Just a big thank you.

    Just a quick question if I may: what exaclty do you mean by ‘leverage’ your psych cap/emotions? Am i correct in assuming it means when your emotions tell you to do something (by fully experiencing the emotions) re a trade, that one should then trade a bigger position, size for example, in that case?

    Thanks!