Jason Zweig believes that “the more you look at stock prices, the more illusory ‘trends’ you see.” His thesis is that Neuro-Economics “can help you understand your reactions and get richer”.

All this appears in his book, Your Money and Your Brain — Become a Smarter, More Successful Investor the Neuroscience Way, published in the UK by Souvenir Press.

Neuro-Economics is a blend of neuroscience, economics and psychology designed to interpret the brain’s reaction to economic stimuli like falling stock prices. Apparently, within 12 milliseconds (one-25th of the time it takes to blink an eye), the news activates the amygdala, a part of the brain that initiates fear and anger. Falling stock prices incite the same brain circuits as the roar of a wild beast.

In those moments, if you make a snap decision, the likelihood is that you will sell your shares. You will also believe you have made a rational decision because the process happens so fast you are unaware of it.

However, all data shows that if you hang onto your shares, you will do much better in the long run. So what’s happening here?

The conclusion is that, the impulse to stay continuously informed about your shares in times of market turmoil leads to nothing but trouble — not to mention high blood pressure and pulse rate.

“Furthermore, the more often you update the prices of your stocks, the more often you will perceive ‘trends’ that are most likely to be just illusions.”

Neuroscience shows that it takes only two iterations of a stimulus for your brain to form an automatic and uncontrollable anticipation of another repetition. However, it’s more likely than not that the “news” was just noise.

Zweig’s advice to investors is : “Stop clicking on market websites. Stay away from the Bloomberg terminal. If you read the FT, pass over the market news and spend your time on the opinion pages instead. You will surely be happier — and almost certainly end up richer.”

Now that sage advice applies not only to economics and investments, but it can also be extrapolated into other areas as well.

It’s generally agreed that 90 percent of what we worry about never happens. It follows that 90 percent of speculation and prognoses never happen either. Keeping up with news, current affairs, politics, and many other topics, will prove to be nothing but hot air and a lot of bothersome timewasting. We should save our equanimity for the actuality of our own lives and never make decisions on the basis of incoming “news”.

Scientists studying fear responses in rats have discovered that although the amygdala plays a central role in emotional learning and processes and expresses fear, a region of the cortex may be involved in learned fear.

By teaching rats to fear a tone by associating it with a shock to the foot at the end of the tone, scientists were able to observe the rats’ response. Ater learning to fear the tone, the rats would spend 70% percent of the time the tone sounded in a frozen state, a typical fear response.

When the researchers chemically blocked activity in the prelimbic cortex, located near the front of the brain, the rats spent only 14% of the time frozen. However, their innate fears were not affected by the blocking of the prelimbic cortex, they still exhibited fear at the sight of a cat or a large open area.

The findings suggest that hyperactivity in that region of the prefrontal cortex might contribute to learned fear disorders in humans, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety disorders.

The study was authored by Kevin A. Corcoran, PhD, and Gregory Quirk, PhD, of the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico. Their report appears in the January 24 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.