Today at Brown

Mark Dean reads minds, so to speak. His research in behavioral and experimental economics focuses on an emerging field called neuroeconomics, which studies brain activity to gain insight into the economic decisions people make.

“Economic models are mostly built on that traditional assumption that people are rational and self-interested individuals who make decisions in order to maximize a utility function,” Dean said. “I want to examine that assumption and see if there are better models out there about the decision-making process that we can take from psychology or experimental economics, then trace the implications of those models to things we care about, like a stock market crash or unemployment.”

Collaborating with neuroscientists, Dean uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain activity in humans while they perform simple economic tasks. His recent work measured levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter long associated with pleasure, and its relationship to expected and realized rewards. The findings were published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics — one of the first neuroeconomics article to appear in the prestigious journal.

Dean completed his Ph.D. in economics at New York University in 2009. Originally from Sheffield, England, he earned a B.A. from King’s College and a master’s degree in economics from University College, London. Dean worked at the Bank of England for three years, then served as a research assistant at the Center for Experimental Social Science at NYU.

Dean says his interest in this niche field of neuroeconomics was sparked partly by genetics — his father is a neuroscientist. But he also believes that his work has potentially massive value in the long run. “If we get this right, we can work out some robust underlying processes about the way people make decisions and that could have great long term benefits for economics,” he said.

At Brown, Dean will continue his fMRI work in collaboration with faculty in the psychology and neuroscience departments. He is currently working on a project looking at the ways in which people’s choices change as they think harder about a problem.