Neuroeconomics: Sharpened Tools of Value for Clinical Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

Abstract

This special issue highlights the application of neuroeconomics to understand the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying impaired behavior and symptoms in mental disorders. Neuroeconomics is a convergence of economics, decision science, psychology, and neuroscience ( 1 Glimcher P.W. Decisions Uncertainty and the Brain: The Science of Neuroeconomics. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA2003 Google Scholar ) that seeks to build formal quantitative models of the mental representations and neural processes that underlie human motivation and choice behavior. Neuroeconomics has already had a significant impact on economics, challenging traditional economic modeling that has been agnostic to the psychological, let alone neural, processes underlying behavior. Loewenstein et al. ( 2 Loewenstein G. Rick S. Cohen J.D. Neuroeconomics. Annu Rev Psychol. 2008; 59: 647-672 Crossref PubMed Scopus (254) Google Scholar ) have highlighted the fact that in contrast to traditional economic theory, the brain does not compute a unitary process related to maximizing utility. Rather, choice behavior relies on the integration in the brain of a diverse array of specialized processes that vary according to changing context.