Neuroeconomics (eBook)

Decision Making and the Brain

Paul W. Glimcher (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: PDF | EPUB

2013 | 2. Auflage
560 Seiten
Elsevier Science (Verlag)
978-0-12-391469-9 (ISBN)

Infos

In the years since it first published, Neuroeconomics: Decision Making and the Brain has become the standard reference and textbook in the burgeoning field of neuroeconomics. The second edition, a nearly complete revision of this landmark book, will set a new standard. This new edition features five sections designed to serve as both classroom-friendly introductions to each of the major subareas in neuroeconomics, and as advanced synopses of all that has been accomplished in the last two decades in this rapidly expanding academic discipline. The first of these sections provides useful introductions to the disciplines of microeconomics, the psychology of judgment and decision, computational neuroscience, and anthropology for scholars and students seeking interdisciplinary breadth. The second section provides an overview of how human and animal preferences are represented in the mammalian nervous systems. Chapters on risk, time preferences, social preferences, emotion, pharmacology, and common neural currencies-each written by leading experts-lay out the foundations of neuroeconomic thought. The third section contains both overview and in-depth chapters on the fundamentals of reinforcement learning, value learning, and value representation. The fourth section, 'The Neural Mechanisms for Choice, integrates what is known about the decision-making architecture into state-of-the-art models of how we make choices. The final section embeds these mechanisms in a larger social context, showing how these mechanisms function during social decision-making in both humans and animals. The book provides a historically rich exposition in each of its chapters and emphasizes both the accomplishments and the controversies in the field. A clear explanatory style and a single expository voice characterize all chapters, making core issues in economics, psychology, and neuroscience accessible to scholars from all disciplines. The volume is essential reading for anyone interested in neuroeconomics in particular or decision making in general. - Editors and contributing authors are among the acknowledged experts and founders in the field, making this the authoritative reference for neuroeconomics - Suitable as an advanced undergraduate or graduate textbook as well as a thorough reference for active researchers - Introductory chapters on economics, psychology, neuroscience, and anthropology provide students and scholars from any discipline with the keys to understanding this interdisciplinary field - Detailed chapters on subjects that include reinforcement learning, risk, inter-temporal choice, drift-diffusion models, game theory, and prospect theory make this an invaluable reference - Published in association with the Society for Neuroeconomics-www.neuroeconomics.org - Full-color presentation throughout with numerous carefully selected illustrations to highlight key concepts

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In the years since it first published, Neuroeconomics: Decision Making and the Brain has become the standard reference and textbook in the burgeoning field of neuroeconomics. The second edition, a nearly complete revision of this landmark book, will set a new standard. This new edition features five sections designed to serve as both classroom-friendly introductions to each of the major subareas in neuroeconomics, and as advanced synopses of all that has been accomplished in the last two decades in this rapidly expanding academic discipline. The first of these sections provides useful introductions to the disciplines of microeconomics, the psychology of judgment and decision, computational neuroscience, and anthropology for scholars and students seeking interdisciplinary breadth. The second section provides an overview of how human and animal preferences are represented in the mammalian nervous systems. Chapters on risk, time preferences, social preferences, emotion, pharmacology, and common neural currencies-each written by leading experts-lay out the foundations of neuroeconomic thought. The third section contains both overview and in-depth chapters on the fundamentals of reinforcement learning, value learning, and value representation. The fourth section, "e;The Neural Mechanisms for Choice, integrates what is known about the decision-making architecture into state-of-the-art models of how we make choices. The final section embeds these mechanisms in a larger social context, showing how these mechanisms function during social decision-making in both humans and animals. The book provides a historically rich exposition in each of its chapters and emphasizes both the accomplishments and the controversies in the field. A clear explanatory style and a single expository voice characterize all chapters, making core issues in economics, psychology, and neuroscience accessible to scholars from all disciplines. The volume is essential reading for anyone interested in neuroeconomics in particular or decision making in general. - Editors and contributing authors are among the acknowledged experts and founders in the field, making this the authoritative reference for neuroeconomics- Suitable as an advanced undergraduate or graduate textbook as well as a thorough reference for active researchers- Introductory chapters on economics, psychology, neuroscience, and anthropology provide students and scholars from any discipline with the keys to understanding this interdisciplinary field- Detailed chapters on subjects that include reinforcement learning, risk, inter-temporal choice, drift-diffusion models, game theory, and prospect theory make this an invaluable reference- Published in association with the Society for Neuroeconomics www.neuroeconomics.org- Full-color presentation throughout with numerous carefully selected illustrations to highlight key concepts

Textauszug

Preface

Since the publication of the first edition of this book, there has been an increasing institutional recognition of the importance of Neuroeconomics in the future of neuroscience, economics, and psychology. At the time that the first edition was published, just a handful of academic institutions included scientists engaged in neuroeconomic research, but the field has matured at an astonishing rate over the past 5 years. Today scholars at nearly a hundred institutions worldwide are at work on neuroeconomic problems and courses on neuroeconomics are now commonplace at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

At the time that the first edition of this volume was published, it was also true that very little was known about the biological mechanism of human and animal decision making. Accordingly, the first edition was primarily designed to provide scholars interested in beginning to undertake neuroeconomic research with a strong interdisciplinary background in the area. Today, however, the landscape is quite different. Over the past 5 years the field of neuroeconomics has matured intellectually as well as institutionally. Thanks to the work of hundreds of cutting-edge scholars, we now know quite a lot about how and where decisions are made in the brain, and that is reflected in the structure of this second edition.

As we did in the first edition, we continue to believe that a strong interdisciplinary background is important for scholars in this area, but we now confine that review to the first section of the book. The second section presents what is known to date about the neural structure of preferences ranging from risk attitudes to social preferences, and to inter-temporal choice. The third section focuses on the learning of values and the neural systems central to our understanding of the neural representation of subjective value. Section 4 examines what is known about the choice process itself; the mechanism interposed between the valuation processes described in Section 3 and behavior. Section 5 expands on social studies of decision making, an important frontier in neuroeconomic research today. The book concludes with an appendix describing the prospect theory of Kahneman and Tversky in detail. It provides important practical information on the use of prospect theory in neuroeconomic experiments.

Using the Book

One of the critical challenges facing anyone interested in Neuroeconomics is the interdisciplinary nature of the science. To be a neuroeconomist one must be fluent in the languages of Economics, Psychology, Neuroscience, and (to a lesser degree) Primate Anthropology. We recognize that very few scholars or students will come to this book with a background in all of these areas, and the first section of the book is designed to address that constraint before the later sections of the book are encountered.

Section 1

Accordingly, the first section of this book is broken into 4 components. Chapters 1 and 2 describe the theory and methods of experimental economics. For someone trained in economics these chapters would be entirely superfluous. They are intended for neurobiologists and psychologists who are trying to get a handle on economic thought as a preparation for the second through fifth sections of the book. For someone who knows a little economics but who has not been formally trained in economics, these two chapters are essential. Chapters 3 and 4 (along with the appendix) provide a survey of the psychology of Judgment and Decision Making. These chapters should be of particular value to economists and neuroscientists unfamiliar with that tradition. Chapters 5 and 6 are designed to provide basic literacy in the fundamental methodologies of neuroscience for non-neuroscientists. Social scientists who hope to make sense of the empirical chapters that follow are urged to take particular care in reading Chapter 5 which provides a primer on basic neuroscience and Chapter 6 which describes the many methods of neuroscientific research. Even for those non-neuroscientists familiar with basic neuroscience, Chapter 6 should provide a valuable source for understanding the limitations of methods employed in neuroscientific research that can be consulted as one reads the rest of the book. Finally, Chapter 7 provides a useful introduction to the study of non-human animals in decision making. For those whose work, or studies, have focused exclusively on human decision makers, this chapter should provide a clear motivation for understanding the studies of non-human decision makers provided throughout this volume.

For instructors using this volume as a textbook in a graduate or undergraduate class, the first section should typically not be presented in its entirety. If the course is, for example, being presented in a department of psychology as an advanced elective, Chapters 1 and 2 may be all that is required for most students. If the course is for students from many backgrounds, Section 1 may be an appropriate object for self-study early in the class sequence.

Section 2

The second section of the book presents core concepts that guide much neuroeconomic research. The section begins with a first chapter that deals with the basic neural foundations of subjective value in simple binary choice situations and is followed by chapters that engage central notions in neuroeconomic research. Several of the chapters of this section focus on the notion of preferences; they describe a core idea in the study of decision making at both a behavioral and a neuroscientific level of analysis. Thus Chapter 9 in this section presents a detailed account of the notion of risk-preference. It describes economic and psychological models of risk preferences that have guided neuroscientific research and then provides a detailed review of current neuroeconomic research in this subarea. Other chapters in this section develop this same theme for intertemporal preferences, social preferences, and for the impact of emotion on preferences. Chapter 13 describes a wealth of research suggesting that neural activity encodes the value of goods and action in a single common neural currency – an idea closely related to the economic notion of utility. Over the last decade, this idea has emerged as a central theme in neuroeconomic research and this chapter reviews those important findings. The section closes with a review of what might be called the chemistry of choice (Chapter 14). It examines an emerging thrust of neuroeconomics: the study of how pharmacologic agents like the hormone oxytocin influence choice behavior. To achieve that goal it provides a basic review of neuropharmacology that will be of particular interest to non-neuroscientific readers.

Section 3

The third section of the book focuses on how we learn and represent value. The first chapter in this section (Chapter 15) provides a much-needed overview of the neurobiology of reinforcement learning and dopamine. This is an area where tremendous progress has been made in computational neuroscience and the chapter provides a clear summary of the mathematical and empirical bases for understanding how “values” are learned by the mammalian brain. This will be new material for many economist readers, but even for neurobiologists familiar with studies of the neurotransmitter dopamine, this chapter should provide an important computational foundation. The second chapter of the section, Chapter 16, extends these ideas with a review of advanced topics in reinforcement learning. Together Chapters 15 and 16 should provide an essential starting point for anyone interested in the neural basis of valuation. Chapter 17 builds on these ideas, and requires some familiarity with the material in Chapter 15. It discusses advanced topics in value encoding in other brain areas and presents data on current research frontiers in reinforcement learning. The section concludes with Chapter 18 which presents alternative views of many of the ideas presented in the first three chapters of this section – including important challenges to the core theories presented in the preceding chapters. This chapter will be of particular interest to behavioral economists.

Section 4

The fourth section presents an overview of the choice process: the neural mechanism that takes value or sensory evidence as an input and triggers action as a behavioral output. It begins with two chapters that examine the two main neuroscientific threads in the study of choice: perceptual decision making and value-based decision making. These are followed by a series of chapters that examine advanced topics in this area. Chapter 21 describes evidence that multiple neural systems interact during the choice process. Chapter 22 examines cutting-edge research on the multiple brain systems that integrate costs and benefits in the generation of choice. Chapter 23 describes neuron-level modeling that is beginning to reconcile perceptual, value-based, and cost-related decision making in a single framework. The final chapter in this section examines well-known violations of traditional choice theory and explores the emerging notion that neurobiological constraints may underlie many of these phenomena.

Section 5

This section concludes the volume with an overview of social decision making, within the framework of game theory. Building explicitly on the material presented in Chapter 11 and in Chapter 2, this section of the book explores the neurobiology of social decision making in some detail. It begins with an...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 13.8.2013
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Allgemeine Psychologie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Biopsychologie / Neurowissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Verhaltenstherapie
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Humanbiologie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Zoologie
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre
• ISBN-10: 0-12-391469-8 / 0123914698
• ISBN-13: 978-0-12-391469-9 / 9780123914699