The House of Representatives, moments ago, voted to approve, by a vote of 263 to 171, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (H.R. 1424), which includes a new financial rescue bill, tax extenders package and mental health and substance use disorder parity legislation, the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (introduced as H.R. 6983). The same package cleared the Senate on October 1 by a vote of 74 to 25. The bill will now be sent to the White House where the President is expected to sign the legislation.

During the House floor debate, a number of those in support of the package applauded the work of Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) and Rep. Jim Ramstad (R-MN), the lead sponsors of the parity bill, for their leadership. In his floor statement, Rep. Kennedy celebrated passage of the parity bill and called on observers to remember the incredible life and contributions of the late Paul Wellstone. Leaders also recognized the tireless work of Senator Domenici (R-NM), a Senate champion who is retiring from public service this year, and Senator Kennedy (D-MA), another champion in the Senate, who is battling cancer. Speaker Pelosi, in her floor statement before the vote, said of the House action, ?We are helping to end discrimination? for those seeking treatment for substance use disorders.

Emotions are riding very high. Herd behavior is everywhere. And if you listen to Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chief Bernanke the primary reason for such a high bailout amount of $700B is to inspire "confidence" in the market. So are our brains to blame for this market mess? Yes, at least according leading neuroeconomist interviewed by Forbes Matthew Herper in his recent piece, Market Mess, Blame Your Brain.

"Fear plus herding equals panic," says Gregory Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University. "You bet it's biologically based."

At the core of the market mess are securities that were backed by extremely risky mortgages. The theory was that slicing and dicing mortgages diluted the risk away.

But the ratings agencies were being compensated by issuers of the mortgage-backed securities, and neuroeconomics says that created big problems. "You don't get mistakes this big based on stupidity alone," says George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University. "It's when you combine stupidity and people's incentives that you get errors of this magnitude."

Consider this forthcoming research by Loewenstein, Roberto Weber and John Hamman, all of Carnegie Mellon. They organized volunteers into partners. One partner is given $10 and told to split it however he sees fit. On average, the deciding partner keeps $8 and gives away $2.

Then researchers repeat the game. This time, the decider pays an "analyst" to decide how to split the money fairly. The game continues for multiple rounds and the decider can fire the analyst. With this change, the decider gets everything. Paying somebody else to ensure assets are divided fairly actually makes things less fair.

So what's a regulator to do? Read about that in Herper's full article here.

A new Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University will focus on how the biology of the brain influences decision-making in politics, policy and business. As a partnership among researchers in the Emory School of Medicine, Emory College and the Goizueta Business School, the center will create an ideal environment to accelerate discovery in this emerging field. The Center is the vision of Gregory S. Berns, MD, PhD, professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine. Berns specializes in the use of brain imaging technologies to understand human motivation and decision-making, with a special interest in neuroeconomics and social neuroscience. There are a whole host of emerging neuropolicy issues that need analyzing including: neurolaw, neuromarketing and neurowarfare.

Do you have what it takes to start your own neurotech venture? If you think so, then I'd highly recommend getting over to MIT to enroll in this year's Neurotechnology Ventures seminar put on by Ed Boyden, Joost Paul Bonsen and Rutledge Ellis-Behnke. Each 2-hour class begins with a survey of a broad topic area, and continues with a live-case study of a current, specific, development or commercialization effort in that area. Explorations will cover a broad array of issues ranging from the deeply technical, to the analysis of market realities from across the neurotechology industry. Topics Include: neuroimaging, neurology/psychiatry diagnosis, rehabilitation, neurosurgery, neuropharmacology, brain Stimulation, prosthetics, sensory and motor augmentation, regenerative neuromedicine, and more. I'll be back there next week for the kick off meeting giving an overview of the neurotech industry while following weeks are full of exciting emerging neurotech innovators.

Casey and I recently met up in SF with Jason Davis, Assistant Professor of Strategy in the MIT Sloan School of Management, to explore his neurotech innovation project whose goal is to understand what makes neurotechnology innovations and ventures successful. It's great to see a serious innovation strategy expert excited about analyzing the rapidly evolving neurotech economy.