Neuroscience Of Preference And Choice

One of the most pressing questions in neuroscience, psychology and economics today is how does the brain generate preferences and make choices? With a unique interdisciplinary approach, this volume is among the first to explore the cognitive and neural mechanisms mediating the generation of the preferences that guide choice. From preferences determining mundane purchases, to social preferences influencing mating choice, through to moral decisions, the authors adopt diverse approaches to answer the question. Chapters explore the instability of preferences and the common neural processes that occur across preferences. Edited by one of the world's most renowned cognitive neuroscientists, each chapter is authored by an expert in the field, with a host of international contributors. Emphasis on common process underlying preference generation makes material applicable to a variety of disciplines - neuroscience, psychology, economics, law, philosophy, etc. Offers specific focus on how preferences are generated to guide decision making, carefully examining one aspect of the broad field of neuroeconomics and complementing existing volumes Features outstanding, international scholarship, with chapters written by an expert in the topic area

Using the most well-studied behavioral analyses of animal subjects to promote a better understanding of the effects of disease and the effects of new therapeutic treatments on human cognition, Methods of Behavior Analysis in Neuroscience provides a reference manual for molecular and cellular research scientists in both academia and the pharmaceutic

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

At the core of the many debates throughout cognitive science concerning how decisions are made are the processes governing the time course of preference formation and decision. From perceptual choices, such as whether the signal on a radar screen indicates an enemy missile or a spot on a CT scan indicates a tumor, to cognitive value-based decisions, such as selecting an agreeable flatmate or deciding the guilt of a defendant, significant and everyday decisions are dynamic over time. Phenomena such as decoy effects, preference reversals and order effects are still puzzling researchers. For example, in a legal context, jurors receive discrete pieces of evidence in sequence, and must integrate these pieces together to reach a singular verdict. From a standard Bayesian viewpoint the order in which people receive the evidence should not influence their final decision, and yet order effects seem a robust empirical phenomena in many decision contexts. Current research on how decisions unfold, especially in a dynamic environment, is advancing our theoretical understanding of decision making. This Research Topic aims to review and further explore the time course of a decision - from how prior beliefs are formed to how those beliefs are used and updated over time, towards the formation of preferences and choices and post-decision processes and effects. Research literatures encompassing varied approaches to the time-scale of decisions will be brought into scope: a) Speeded decisions (and post-decision processes) that require the accumulation of noisy and possibly non-stationary perceptual evidence (e.g., randomly moving dots stimuli), within a few seconds, with or without temporal uncertainty. b) Temporally-extended, value-based decisions that integrate feedback values (e.g., gambling machines) and internally-generated decision criteria (e.g., when one switches attention, selectively, between the various aspects of several choice alternatives). c) Temporally extended, belief-based decisions that build on the integration of evidence, which interacts with the decision maker's belief system, towards the updating of the beliefs and the formation of judgments and preferences (as in the legal context). Research that emphasizes theoretical concerns (including optimality analysis) and mechanisms underlying the decision process, both neural and cognitive, is presented, as well as research that combines experimental and computational levels of analysis.

Research on economic decision-making seeks to understand how subjects choose between plans of action (lotteries, gambles, prospects) that have economic consequences. The key difficulty in making such decisions is that typically no plan of action available to the decision-maker guarantees a specific outcome, rather, consequences are risky or uncertain. More recently, researchers in psychology, behavioral and computational neuroscience and psychology have started to apply these theoretical principles to studying choice behavior and its neural basis in the laboratory, for instance in electrophysiological studies of animals making choices for primary reward such as juice and neuroimaging studies of humans making choices for money. Moreover, researchers across all these fields are, in parallel, studying how decisions are guided by learning and how the computations relevant to decisions and choices are represented neurally. This emerging field of theoretically grounded decision neuroscience is now known as "neuroeconomics." With this Research Topic, we aim to solicit contributions from researchers from the fields of neurobiology, behavioral and computational neuroscience and economics which discuss the neural computations underlying decision-making and adaptive behavior.

Whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions—both big and small—have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented. As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice—the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish—becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice—from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs—has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse. By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counter intuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on those that are important and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.

As technology has opened new windows into the brain, it has clarified what happens there when people make decisions about money. This clarity has produced a new science called neuroeconomics, which addresses diverse questions, such as why people save, buy stocks, steal, and overspend. The many different methods used in neuroeconomics have, however, often yielded unclear findings about the quality of these decisions, primarily because the field has lacked both guidelines for categorizing the different aspects of quality, and guidelines for selecting methods to study these aspects. Before this book, in which Peter Politser guides the reader through the different regions of study, there was no scientific guide for those interested in neuroeconomics. Politser shows how to evaluate specific elements of choice, such as regret, expectation, risk, ambiguity, time preference, and learning, and surveys economic and behavioral models of decision making skills. He reviews the neural correlates of decisional impairments and inconsistenciesclarifying, for example, why we do not recall what we experience, experience what we expect, or like what we want, and provides detailed tables of decision-making skills, their neural correlates, and possible impairments. Politser also considers what the field of neuroeconomics may add to future conceptions of decision making, and outlines the limitations of various studies of different capacities. He then introduces a broader field for the design and interpretation of neuroeconomic studiesa neuroepidemiology of decision making. Everyone who wants to understand the research in neuroeconomics or use its methods should read this book. Its accessible text, along with an extensive glossary, will guide those with little economic or neuroscience background, and make the book an excellent supplement for courses on neuroscience and decision making.

Psychologists have long been aware that most people maintain an irrationally positive outlook on life—but why? Turns out, we might be hardwired that way. In this absorbing exploration, Tali Sharot—one of the most innovative neuroscientists at work today—demonstrates that optimism may be crucial to human existence. The Optimism Bias explores how the brain generates hope and what happens when it fails; how the brains of optimists and pessimists differ; why we are terrible at predicting what will make us happy; how emotions strengthen our ability to recollect; how anticipation and dread affect us; how our optimistic illusions affect our financial, professional, and emotional decisions; and more. Drawing on cutting-edge science, The Optimism Bias provides us with startling new insight into the workings of the brain and the major role that optimism plays in determining how we live our lives.