Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions

The emerging field of neuroeconomics has leveraged theories and approaches from psychology, neuroscience, and economics to understand how we make decisions. This book provides comprehensive and accessible coverage of core topics and recent advances in the field of neuroeconomics and highlights emerging trends in the field. The book is divided into seven major sections, starting with a brief overview of some of the foundational work and methods in neuroeconomics. Building from this foundation, the book focuses on topical reviews that span the breadth of the field. It begins with sections on learning, risk and uncertainty, and intertemporal choice, and then progresses to modulators of decision making, social decision making, and individual differences. The book concludes with a section on consumer neuroscience and real-world applications. Neuoroeconomics; Core Topics and Current Directions, provides a comprehensive overview of neuroeconomics through the lenses of social, cognitive, affective, and decision neuroscience.

Section 1:
Foundations of Neuroeconomics: History and Methods. - Reward learning and choice: from theory to neuronal signals. - Resolving uncertainty: Foundational neuroeconomic studies of risk and ambiguity. - What lesion studies have taught us about frontal lobe contributions to decision-making. - Delay discounting: empirical foundations and future directions. - Foundations of Social Decision-Making. - Neural mechanisms of reward, decision-making and learning in a social context: insights from computational neuroimaging. - Foundations of Consumer Neuroscience. -
Section 2:
Valuation, Learning, Risk, and Uncertainty. - Abstract Representations of Economic Choice in the Primate Orbitofrontal Cortex. - Decomposing economic choices with drift-diffusion models. - Breaking the tug-of-war: What neuroeconomics can gain by moving past competition-only models. - Enhancing Ecological Validity in Habit Research Via Naturalistic Methods. - Pain and value-based decision-making: An introduction and implications for neuroeconomics. - Non-reinforced preference change. -
Section 3:
Temporal discounting, effort-based choice, and self-control. - Intertemporal Choice. - Intertemporal choices are influenced by many things beyond time itself. - The role of memory in temporal discounting. - The neuroeconomics of work: Computational and neural mechanisms of the dynamics of effort-based decisions. - Self-control and decision-making. -
Section 4:
Modulators of Decision-Making: Emotion and Social Context. - The value of perceived control. - Integrated Neural Circuitry Supporting Emotion Regulation and Decision Making. - Emotion and choice: The integral role of emotion in constructing value. - Modeling the social brain: Neurocomputational approaches to interpersonal learning and decision-making. - From experiences to preferences: neural insights through a naturalistic neuroimaging paradigm. -
Section 5:
Social preferences and social decision-making. - Prosociality and the Brain: Understanding When and Why We Help, Share, and Cooperate. - The Neural Mechanisms of Strategic Decision Making. - The neuroeconomics of social influence and contagion. - Comparative Game Theory: Bringing Ethology back into Social Decision Neuroscience. -
Section 6:
Individual Differences in Neuroeconomics: Age, Sex and Gender, and Clinical Variation. - Decision Neuroscience of Aging: 20 Years In. - Decision making in the aging brain: An update of the evidence base for the `affect-integration-motivation framework. - Maladaptive decision making in older adults: Confirmation bias and financial exploitation. - Sex/gender in neuroeconomics. - Domain-general and domain-specific values and their role in psychopathology. - Applications and Evolution of Neuroeconomics and Reinforcement Learning Models in Substance Use Disorders. -
Section 7:
From Neural Data to Societal Impact: Applications of Neuroeconomics. - Applications in Consumer Neuroscience: Decoding and Neuroforecasting. - Attention Dynamics: Antecedents to Consumer Choice. - Policy consequences of the new neuroeconomic framework.