An interdisciplinary group of scientists from the University of Cambridge decided to take a look at trading behaviors of male brokers in the City of London, and found that sell and buy decisions, and their successes, are often linked to hormonal concentrations of testosterone and cortisol.
From the abstract of the study, published at Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.:

Little is known about the role of the endocrine system in financial risk taking. Here, we report the findings of a study in which we sampled, under real working conditions, endogenous steroids from a group of male traders in the City of London. We found that a trader’s morning testosterone level predicts his day’s profitability. We also found that a trader’s cortisol rises with both the variance of his trading results and the volatility of the market. Our results suggest that higher testosterone may contribute to economic return, whereas cortisol is increased by risk. Our results point to a further possibility: testosterone and cortisol are known to have cognitive and behavioral effects, so if the acutely elevated steroids we observed were to persist or increase as volatility rises, they may shift risk preferences and even affect a trader’s ability to engage in rational choice.

More from Nature: The testosterone of trading…
Paper: Endogenous steroids and financial risk taking on a London trading floor Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0704025105
Image credit: miskan: Kuwait Stock Exchange

The latest neurophysiology research is showing that unconscious processes in the brain develop up to seven seconds before the conscious decision is made, and these processes could be predictive of the decision itself. Here’s what investigators from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, in collaboration with the Charité University Hospital and the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, have demonstrated, as reported by the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science:

The researchers from the group of Professor John-Dylan Haynes used a brain scanner to investigate what happens in the human brain just before a decision is made. "Many processes in the brain occur automatically and without involvement of our consciousness. This prevents our mind from being overloaded by simple routine tasks. But when it comes to decisions we tend to assume they are made by our conscious mind. This is questioned by our current findings." (Nature Neuroscience, April 13th 2008)
In the study, participants could freely decide if they wanted to press a button with their left or right hand. They were free to make this decision whenever they wanted, but had to remember at which time they felt they had made up their mind. The aim of the experiment was to find out what happens in the brain in the period just before the person felt the decision was made. The researchers found that it was possible to predict from brain signals which option participants would take already seven seconds before they consciously made their decision. Normally researchers look at what happens when the decision is made, but not atwhat happens several seconds before. The fact that decisions can be predicted so long before they are made is a astonishing finding.
This unprecedented prediction of a free decision was made possible by sophisticated computer programs that were trained to recognize typical brain activity patterns preceding each of the two choices. Micropatterns of activity in the frontopolar cortex were predictive of the choices even before participants knew which option they were going to choose. The decision could not be predicted perfectly, but prediction was clearly above chance. This suggests that the decision is unconsciously prepared ahead of time but the final decision might still be reversible.
"Most researchers investigate what happens when people have to decide immediately, typically as a rapid response to an event in our environment. Here we were focusing on the more interesting decisions that are made in a more natural, self-paced manner", Haynes explains.
More than 20 years ago the American brain scientist Benjamin Libet found a brain signal, the so-called "readiness-potential" that occurred a fraction of a second before a conscious decision. Libet’s experiments were highly controversial and sparked a huge debate. Many scientists argued that if our decisions are prepared unconsciously by the brain, then our feeling of "free will" must be an illusion. In this view, it is the brain that makes the decision, not a person’s conscious mind. Libet’s experiments were particularly controversial because he found only a brief time delay between brain activity and the conscious decision.
In contrast, Haynes and colleagues now show that brain activity predicts even up to 7 seconds ahead of time how a person is going to decide. But they also warn that the study does not finally rule out free will: "Our study shows that decisions are unconsciously prepared much longer ahead than previously thought. But we do not know yet where the final decision is made. We need to investigate whether a decision prepared by these brain areas can still be reversed."

Press release: Unconscious decisions in the brain…

Some consumers of black market Rhino-horn soup (apparently a delicacy in Asia) may get more (or less?) than they bargained for. Two horns stolen from a South African museum are from the 19th century, when taxidermy followed a rather unique process. Jatti Bredekamp, chief executive of Iziko Museums explains…

“Before the mid-twentieth century, taxidermy mounts were prepared by being soaked in arsenic and preserved from insect infestation through regular applications of DDT, both highly toxic poisons that retain their toxicity over time,” he said.
Bredekamp said the horns were deliberately targeted in a carefully planned robbery, and might be destined for Asia, where ground rhino horns are a prized aphrodisiac.

The theft is unfortunate, but hopefully a few poachers (or their supporters) get what they’ve got coming.
More from Reuters…
Photo courtesy of Matt Field