Neuroökonomie (Neuroeconomics)

Economic decisions as well as everyday decisions depend on the activity of specific brain structures contributing to the control of various stages of the decision making process. Activation and deactivation of these brain regions can be studied using modern brain imaging techniques, e.g. functional magnet resonance imaging (fMRI). This publication presents an overview of the interdisciplinary scientific field “neuroeconomics” – a recent discipline of brain sciences, focused on seven main aspects of economic and financial decision making. First, how are economic parameters such as value and utility of a reward, gain or loss, risk and uncertainty reflected in the activation of specific brain regions? Second, how specifically contribute anatomically defined brain regions to the complex process of decision making? Third, how is decision making altered after lesion of brain regions involved in decision making? Fourth, how are brain regions, contributing to the decision making process, linked together in neuronal networks, thus promoting decision making by interaction? Fifth, how does decision making depend on traits of personality, on genetic variations of neuronal mechanisms and on physiological regulation, e.g. by hormones? Sixth, how does decision making depend on the social and cultural environment of the decider? Seventh, how are heuristics or intuitions exploited, when information concerning the options of decision is limited, and to which extend is decision making influenced by biases? The central part of this publication presents a review of the results of studies on neuroeconomics using the method of fMRI (up to June 2010).