Agnieszka Tymula is a neuroeconomist who studies how people make decisions and why some people make different decisions than others. She is particularly interested in how the willingness to take risks changes as people age and how this relates to changes in the brain. When she am not doing research she enjoys swimming in the ocean, long walks and bike rides with her family.
Paul Glimcher is a neurobiologist and an economist who basically spends all of his time trying to figure out how those two things go together. Most of the time he's either studying how the brain makes decisions as a neuroscientist or studying how people make choices about what they buy or who they spend time with, which he does when he is being an economist. When he is not studying how people make decisions he is mostly hanging out with his three kids, who range in age from 5 to 14, on sailboats.
Are Adolescents Really Risk-Takers? Most Adults Say Yes, But the Science is Starting to Say No
Most adults firmly believe that as kids reach their teens, they start to take crazy risks that get them in trouble. Motivated to protect teenagers, adults impose age limits on what they consider to be really dangerous activities.