Neuroimaging of Economic Decision-Making
Economic decision-making refers to decisions that involve mainly monetary rewards between courses of action with different potential outcomes. The emergence of neuroeconomics, the integration of economic decision-making perspectives from economics, psychology, and the neurosciences, provides a framework to link normative accounts of decision-making to brain activity and behavior. To illustrate the advance of this approach, we focus on two types of economic decision-making addressed by brain imaging and neuroeconomic research: decision-making under risk and intertemporal choice. We present an overview of risk and economic decision-making, relevant behavioral paradigms from behavioral research, and neuroimaging results that link neural activity to specific patterns of behavior.