Decision Making: Neural and Behavioural Approaches (Progress in Brain Research)

And indeed, measurements of brain activation in regions of this network allow predicting which of two items an individual prefers and choses, at least when the subjective value difference between the two items is fairly large FitzGerald et al. To sum up, neuroeconomic research has reliably identified a brain network representing economic value that allows predicting individual preferences and choices. However, whereas much progress has been made identifying the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying concrete choices, neuroeconomic research has mostly neglected questions such as why people choose and thus value what they choose, or why different people choose and thus value different things.

At the proximal level, this question has been addressed by looking at the impact of individual reinforcement learning histories see Lee et al. Moreover, neuroeconomic research is largely restricted to relatively simple decisions, such as choices between two consumer goods, and rarely investigates more complex decisions and life choices.

Such issues are however addressed by researchers interested in core value, mainly from social psychology and sociology. In the following section, we will summarize some key concepts and findings from this field. Core value refers to stable motivational constructs or beliefs about desirable end states that transcend specific situations and guide the selection or evaluation of behaviors and events Rohan, An individual's core values form an internal compass that people refer to when they are asked to explain and justify their preferences, decisions, or behaviors.

For example, a person may frequently donate money to charitable causes and explain this behavior by their altruistic core values. Core values are thus instrumental in providing the individual with meaning in the world. They provide an organizational principle for an individual's self-schema Roccas and Brewer, , forming the core of one's identity Hitlin, The 10 universal core values and their conceptual definitions Schwartz, Individuals with highly self-interested core values emphasize power and achievement-related goals and choices, whereas individuals with self-transcending values emphasize universal and benevolent goals and choices.

Individuals with conservative values emphasize conformity, security, and tradition, whereas individuals with open-to-change values emphasize self-directive and stimulating goals and choices Schwartz, Circumplex formed by the 10 universal core values illustration reproduced with permission from Olver and Mooradian, Importantly, core values are not only used to give orientation and stability to the self, but allow predicting individual differences in concrete decisions and behaviors. For example, a person emphasizing conservation-related values more frequently observes traditional customs on religious holidays than a person who does not hold these values in high esteem.

A person who emphasizes self-transcending values more frequently uses environmentally friendly products than a person who emphasizes self-enhancing values Bardi and Schwartz, Core value differences have furthermore been shown to be powerful predictors of voting behavior Schwartz et al. Thus, the core value concept is a powerful construct that may explain why different people value different things and why different people choose differently in the same situation, and thus may be fruitfully combined with neuroeconomic research on value computation and decision-making.

However, so far not much research has attempted to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying the role of core value in decision-making.

Narayanan Srinivasan

In a first attempt to integrate core value into current neuroimaging research, we aimed at identifying the neural regions involved in the representation of core value Brosch et al. To this end, we showed our participants examples of behaviors that reflect different core values e. The economic value condition activated the expected neuroeconomic value network, including regions such as VMPFC, posterior cingulate cortex, and posterior parietal cortex.

In contrast, the core value condition led to increased activation in medial prefrontal cortex MPFC and in the dorsal striatum. MPFC has frequently been linked to processes involving self-reflection Macrae et al. The observed activation of MPFC is thus consistent with the conceptualization of core value as an integral part of the self-schema Hitlin, However, given that so far this is the only neuroimaging study linking core value to MPFC, it would be important to replicate this finding in future studies.

As outlined in the previous sections, economic value and core value both refer to evaluative representations that guide decisions and behaviors. They are however conceptualized at different levels of situational concreteness, with economic value referring to a common currency that operates in concrete choice situations, and core value referring to motivational constructs that guide choices and behaviors across many situations. Despite the conceptual similarities, there has not been much integration and cross-fertilization between the two research traditions.

We suggest combining the two value concepts into a common framework for decision-making. In linking these two concepts, neuroeconomic research may be enriched by an elaborate and empirically validated concept that allows predicting and explaining individual differences in value-based decision-making. Furthermore, integrating the set of core values and the related behaviors into neuroeconomic research goes beyond the kind of choices that are usually investigated empirically, moving from simple choices between consumer goods to a more diverse and complex array of choices.

In return, core value research may gain a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms by which core values impact on decisions and behaviors. In this context, several core value researchers have suggested that the effects of core value on decisions and behaviors are relatively indirect, being exerted by changing the beliefs and norms of the individual Dietz et al. Here we want to evaluate the possibility that, in addition to these indirect effects, a more direct connection links core value, economic value, decision-making and behavior.

Our hypothesis is that individual differences in core value may be determinants of how much economic value is given to the different options in concrete choice situations. Thus, the behavioral effects of core value differences may—at least partly—be implemented by neural mechanisms underlying the computation of economic value. In what follows, we will review the relevant neuroimaging evidence against which our hypothesis can be evaluated. Whereas to our knowledge only two studies have so far directly addressed the impact of core values on neural activation Brosch et al.

The first neuroimaging study to investigate the neural correlates of charitable donations Moll et al. In other trials, participants received money for themselves. Results revealed increased activation of the striatum, a central part of the neural system representing economic value, both when participants received money for themselves and when they decided to donate for a good cause. Taken together, these findings suggest that receiving money and donating money are both rewarding experiences, as expressed by a shared anatomical system of value representation. These findings were extended by demonstrating that increased striatal responses to charitable money transfers also occur when the transfer is mandatory similar to an income tax , but that the striatal response is even higher when people voluntarily decide to make a donation Harbaugh et al.

In another study, participants were matched into pairs and presented with a series of unequal monetary distributions, where one participant received a large monetary endowment and the other one nothing Tricomi et al. Finally, in a study on moral dilemmas, participants were confronted with scenarios where they had to make decisions that sacrificed the lives of some people in order to save others. Taken together, these results suggest that the neural regions representing economic value are involved in decisions and behaviors that are related to core values. But are individual differences in the activation of these regions related to actual differences in altruistic decisions and behaviors?

In the taxation-donation study by Harbough and colleagues described above, participants who showed a stronger striatal response when receiving money for themselves opted less frequently to donate money to charity Harbaugh et al. Furthermore, in a study looking at individual differences in preferences for distributive fairness, participants who generally choose equal distributions of money showed increased amygdala activation when confronted with very uneven distributions Haruno and Frith, These two studies suggest that behavioral differences that are relevant to core values may indeed be driven by differences in activation of neuroeconomic value regions.

As a final step in our argumentative chain, it remains to be shown that different neural activation patterns in economic value regions are actually related to individual differences in the core value hierarchy. To address this issue, we measured the core value hierarchies of individuals who participated in a donation task Brosch et al. In some trials, participants could gain money for themselves, in other trials they decided whether they wanted to donate some of their money to charity. At the neural level, all our participants showed increased activation of the striatum when receiving money.

However, the activation was more pronounced for participants with a more self-centered core value hierarchy, suggesting that egoistic behavior is potentially more rewarding for participants with self-centered core values than for less self-centered participants. Impact of self-centered core value hierarchies on neural regions representing economic value and on charitable behavior. A Participants with a self-centered core value hierarchy kept more money for themselves instead of donating it to charity.

B The same participants showed increased activation in the ventral striatum when receiving monetary rewards. C Correlation between self-interest value and parameter estimates for ventral striatum reproduced with permission from Brosch et al. Participants with self-centered core values furthermore showed a stronger neural response of the amygdala when having the opportunity to gain money for themselves, consistent with the suggestion that the amygdala acts as a relevance detector that is sensitive to the motivational salience of a stimulus given the current needs, goals and values of the organism Davis and Whalen, ; Sander et al.

Somewhat surprisingly, participants showed decreases in striatal activation when deciding to donate their money to charity, consistent with striatal deactivations observed during financial loss Delgado et al. The difference between our results and the results by Harbaugh et al. For example, in the study by Moll and colleagues, participants were confronted with a different charitable organization in each trial, which included also organizations whose goals were not endorsed by the participants, whereas in our study, participants always donated to the same charitable organization that was chosen by the participant in advance.

Furthermore, in the study by Harbaugh and colleagues, the monetary payoff to the charity was not correlated with the financial loss by the participant i. The striatal response reflects increased activation to increased monetary payoff to the charity; this analysis is thus not sensitive to the effects of the financial loss by the participant. Taken together, striatal activation differences have been shown to be linked to behaviors reflecting self-interested as well as self-transcendent core values.

Furthermore, our results point to an additional neurocognitive process involved in self-transcendent behavior that involves social cognition mechanisms: In our study, when facing the opportunity to donate money, the more generous participants showed increased activation in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex DMPFC , which, together with temporoparietal junction TPJ and precuneus forms a social cognition network that is involved in forming impressions of others and in thinking about the needs, goals, and beliefs of others Frith and Frith, ; Van Overwalle, Thus, altruistic behavior may be related to a more thorough evaluation of the needs and goals of others rather than one's own needs.

Consistent with this notion, another donation study observed that activation in right TPJ was correlated with the participants' willingness to donate money to a charitable organization Hare et al. Furthermore, neuroanatomical differences in gray matter volume in TPJ have been shown to be strongly associated with altruistic behavior Morishima et al. Taken together, the findings reviewed here suggest that core values may indeed exert their effects on decisions and behaviors via modulations of the neural regions involved in the computation of economic value: Participants with a value hierarchy dominated by self-centered core values make more selfish decisions and show a concurrent stronger activation of the ventral striatum Brosch et al.

Thus, participants with self-centered core values may perceive selfish choices and behaviors as more rewarding, and as a consequence will show these behaviors more often than participants with less self-centered core values. Altruistic behaviors may also be reflected in differential activation of the ventral striatum Moll et al. During charitable choices, social cognition regions show increased connectivity with regions representing economic value Hare et al. Thus, when a person with a given hierarchy of core values faces a concrete decision situation, these core values may exert their influence on individual choices and behaviors by directly modulating the computations of the expected reward value for the different options.

Previous theorizing in social psychology and sociology has conceptualized the link between core value and behavior as relatively indirect, by postulating that core values impact on the beliefs and norms of an individual which then result in behavioral differences Dietz et al. We propose that, in addition to these indirect pathways, a more direct path may underlie the impact of core value on behavior.

By modulating the economic value computations for different behavioral options, core values may directly impact on the perceived reward value of the different behavioral options see also Feather, Of course, it must be noted that all neuroimaging studies cited here have used financial decisions, and have linked core value related decision-making to higher sensitivity to monetary reward only. There are many different types of rewards, including primary rewards such as food or erotic stimuli, as well as secondary rewards such as money or power.

It remains to be shown that the findings reviewed here can generalize to other situations and types of rewards. A recent meta-analysis Sescousse et al. However, it would be highly interesting to investigate individual differences in sensitivity to different types of rewards as a function of the individual core value hierarchy e.

Introduction

In addition to this direct impact of core values on neural representations of economic value in the striatum and VMPFC, as well as their modulations via social cognition regions such as TPJ and DMPFC, a more indirect pathway by which core values impact on individual beliefs and norms may play an important role: Core values form an important part of our self-concept, i. For example, a person who values benevolence may frequently make efforts to select situations and environments in which concrete altruistic behaviors can be realized, such as going to fund-raisers or charity sales, in order to act accordingly to his beliefs.

The findings reviewed here furthermore suggest a new perspective on the mechanisms that may underlie the development of differences in individual or cultural core value hierarchies: Some groups or individuals may habitually show stronger sensitivity of economic value regions when receiving valued objects, which may be due to either genetic factors or epigenetic factors such as social reinforcement.

Habitually stronger reward sensitivity may lead to an increase in self-interested behavior via positive reinforcement and to a more positive evaluation of prospective outcomes of such a behavior in related decision-making processes. This may result in an increased probability of choosing selfish alternatives. Similar to the role of self-perception in attitude formation Bem, , habitual choice of selfish behaviors may crystallize in an accordingly adjusted core value hierarchy that emphasizes self-centered values.

Once these values become integral part of the self-concept, the explicit representation of the importance of certain classes of behavior may furthermore drive decisions and behaviors, by combining explicit and implicit reinforcing mechanisms. The model outlined in this paper should be considered as a starting point only, as research on the neural correlates and mechanisms of core values is at an early stage. We hope, however, that our contribution will stimulate further research that focuses on the role of individual differences in decision-making and the underlying neural mechanisms.

In this context, economists recently have begun investigating the impact of individual differences in personality traits e. Somewhat related to the egoism-altruism dimension discussed in the present paper, it has been suggested that the personality dimension of Agreeableness may be related to higher cooperation with others.

Initial data from a Prisoner's Dilemma game seems to support this link Rustichini et al. Future research on core values should aim at measuring personality dimensions and the individual core value hierarchy simultaneously, to assess which constructs are more powerful predictors of individual decisions and behaviors. Similar results have been observed for highly religious individuals Inzlicht et al.

Taken together, in this contribution we aimed at demonstrating the feasibility and usefulness of an integration of economic value research and core value research. We have suggested potential mechanisms by which core values, explicitly represented as long-term goals anchored in the self-schema, may drive concrete decisions and behaviors by acting on neural regions representing economic value. Core value research provides a theoretically elaborate and empirically validated concept that allows predicting and explaining individual differences in value-based decision-making. The theoretical integration of the different concepts opens up several new and exciting topics of research, some of them with the potential for considerable societal impact.

For instance, the links between core values and behavior are sometimes relatively weak Bardi and Schwartz, As an example, many people claim that for them the protection of the environment is an important value, but do not show consistent environmentally friendly behavior Dietz et al.

Neuroimaging research may contribute to developing targeted interventions that aim at increasing the effect of environmental core values on the corresponding behavior by exploring how situations need to be framed to elicit a high economic value of the desired behavior. Many other examples are possible. We hope that the ideas outlined here will be valuable for many researchers who care about value, and will stimulate further integration of the different value literatures. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Journal List Front Hum Neurosci v. Published online Jul Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Received Apr 12; Accepted Jul 7. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and subject to any copyright notices concerning any third-party graphics etc.

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract Value plays a central role in practically every aspect of human life that requires a decision: Table 1 The 10 universal core values and their conceptual definitions Schwartz, For many, these costs do not compare to the emotional and social burden associated with mental illness, such as relational conflicts, low self-esteem, shame, and stigma.

While we have made great strides in the last 50 years to develop appropriate treatments for psychiatric disorders, significant gaps remain 5. Not only are we discovering the limitations of current pharmacological and behavioral treatments for psychiatric disorders, but against the background of significant advances in brain sciences over the last 10 years, it has become increasingly recognized that the current nosological framework represented by the DSM-IV and ICD exhibits serious shortcomings with respect to validity 6.

In addition, in the NIH established the new discipline of translational science to inform targeted treatment development. In this approach, basic science develops models for understanding normative behavior in healthy individuals. These models are then applied to psychiatric populations to identify biomarkers or endophenotypes that point to the mechanisms of attention, memory, and other higher cognitive processes underlying the behavioral phenotypes of psychiatric disorder. Biomarkers refer to characteristics that are measured objectively as an index of a pathogenic process or as a response to treatment 8 , while endophenotypes refer to well-specified physiological or behavioral measures that occupy the terrain between disease symptoms behavioral phenotypes and risk genotypes 6.

The final step in the translational approach involves the testing of the biomarker as a mechanism of change in clinical trials. For psychopathology, the modern translational goal is to explain mental phenomenon at multiple levels ranging from neurobiological to psychological, but with enough detail so that consequences at one level induce testable predictions at another. The neural circuitry of reward offers a promising functional domain alongside other functional domains for creating new ways of classifying mental disorders based on dimensions of observable behavior and neurobiological measures.

Empirical evidence 9 — 11 supports the potential of anomalous reward processing as a translational biomarker or endophenotype, and evidence is emerging in support of the role of reward-related brain function as a predictor of treatment response in psychiatric disorders In the context of behavioral learning and motivational theories, rewards positive and negative reinforcers and punishment are thought to have three functions: Animal studies have identified the specific brain regions and pathways associated with the different functions of reward.

These studies are reviewed in the papers by Michael Platt and Read Montague in the current special issue and elsewhere 9 , 13 — Broadly speaking, animal studies have demonstrated dopaminergic single-cell firing rates modulated by primary rewards e. These modulations show up directly in the ventral tegmental area and substantia nigra and indirectly in structures to which midbrain dopamine neurons project: Human neuroimaging studies have confirmed that similar regions underlie human reward processing in response to a variety of primary 17 as well as secondary rewards, for instance, monetary 18 or social rewards Reward processing lies at the basis of learning and motivation, and disturbances within the reward system have been reported for all major classes of psychiatric disorders.

One of the first classes of psychiatric disorder to be examined from a reward perspective is substance use disorders SUD , because addictive substances induce effects similar to natural rewards. Not surprisingly, there is extensive evidence of hyper-responsivity to relevant cues within the mesolimbic reward system among addicted individuals There is also evidence for the down-regulation of striatal D2 receptor density among chronic stimulant users 21 and evidence of reduced striatal responsivity to non-drug rewards among substance addicted individuals.

Perhaps most interestingly though least definitively , there is evidence that among adolescents without significant drug use history but who at very high risk of developing problems with addiction, there are identifiable on-average differences within the reward system As discussed in detail by Monterosso, Piray and Luo this special issue , establishing pre-morbid associations is a critical step with regard to establishing endophenotypes for addictive disorders. Resemblances in the pathophysiology of reward between addictive disorders and pathological gambling PG have allowed for the reformulation of PG as a nonsubstance-related addictive disorder 23 , Recent reviews of neuroimaging studies in PG 25 , 26 have demonstrated that PG is associated with blunted mesolimbic-prefrontal cortex activation to nonspecific rewards, whereas these areas show increased activation when exposed to gambling-related stimuli in cue exposure paradigms.

Mood disorders are another class of psychiatric disorder for which altered reward processing appears to be an important correlate. In fact, Hasler and colleagues 27 identified impaired reward function as meeting more endophenotype criteria 28 for depression compared to other putative endophenotypes. A central feature of major depressive disorder MDD is a pervasive absence of motivation to obtain reward, low frequency of pursuing rewarding experiences, and reduced enjoyment of rewarding outcome As reviewed by Ernst current special issue , these features of MDD are particularly devastating because of the clinical consequences of apathy, anhedonia, amotivation, and loss of interest in hobbies, socialization, work, food, and sex.

Like SUD and PG, this symptom cluster appears to be phenomenologically related to the putative functions of the mesolimbic dopaminergic projections from the VTA into the ventral mPFC, amygdala, and ventral striatum However, studies with depressed patients demonstrate deactivation in response to motivationally relevant stimuli usually associated with increased reward responses in healthy subjects.

This motivational blindness appear to be present in at-risk but never-depressed biological offspring of mothers with a history of depression 31 , suggesting a potential causal role for disturbances in reward processing in the development of depression. Abnormal dopamine-mediated responses to rewarding stimuli have also been demonstrated for schizophrenia, with the most salient abnormalities in the orbital and dorsal prefrontal structures that play a critical role in the ability to represent the value of outcomes and plans 9. With regard to Attention-Deficit-Hyperacivity-Disorder ADHD 32 , an increasing number of theoretical frameworks have incorporated altered reinforcement sensitivity as an important etiological factor in ADHD, and Sonuga-Barke and Fairchild review some of these models in the current special issue.

A growing literature focuses on the neural circuitry of reward in disruptive behavior disorders e. Psychophysiological, neuroendocronological as well as neuroimaging studies in externalizing disorders have traditionally tested theories of low arousal, sensation-seeking, fearlessness, stress responsivity and, more recently, empathy deficits These theories can be easily related to motivational concepts, and recent studies 34 — 38 have begun to use behavioral economics and neuroeconomics to explicitly conceptualize these disorders within a reward framework.

There have also been a growing number of studies examining the neural correlates of reward in personality disorders, pervasive developmental disorders, anxiety disorders, research in children and adolescents as well as older adults 35 — As reviewed by Hartley and Phelps anxiety disorders and Delgado and Dickerson disorders associated with old age , neuroeconomics may be a very promising field of application, not only to address the lack of reward-related work in these areas, but to highlight how neural systems associated with psychopathology may interact with the reward system in the development or maintenance of disorders.

Despite the great strides made by research examining the neural basis of reward processing in psychiatric disorders, several limitations exist that may be addressed by the application of a neuroeconomics approach. The first limitation of current research is not specific to reward processing but relates to the wider translational science approach.

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Cohen and Insel 39 pointed out that a major scientific obstacle which has impeded the translation of advances in cognitive neuroscience to clinical research and practice is the fact that research instruments e. Tasks need to be robust and sensitive to produce reliable results in clinical populations, while having sufficient sensitivity to detect changes in clinical state necessary to assess the effects of treatment. Tasks furthermore need to be feasible and appropriate for use in challenging populations. Lastly, there is not a single good case for a task that shows promise in a psychiatric population also being profiled in sufficient large samples of healthy individuals.

In general, knowledge of normative responses in healthy populations is not well-enough characterized to permit the extraction of useful individual difference measures — a key if new cognitive tasks and their brain response correlates are to be useful in real-world clinical settings. These scientific challenges are exacerbated by sociological challenges. Basic scientists responsible for developing experimental tasks are often neither interested in, nor rewarded for translating these paradigms into clinically useful instruments, while clinical researchers and practitioners who could make productive use of such instruments rarely have the relevant training in behavioral and neuroscientific methods to pursue such work Moreover, there is a lack of crosstalk between the fields of psychology, cognitive neuroscience, neuroanatomy and computational science.

In other words, as put by Cohen and Insel, translational research in cognitive neuroscience is in need of a translator.

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While this aim can be achieved with the establishment of incentive and funding opportunities for investigators and programs, this aim may also be facilitated by the creation of new disciplines where researchers from multiple fields can converge. In the context of reward research, we propose that neuroeconomics is a field that shows immense promise as a potential bridge for translational science. Neuroeconomics is concerned with questions about how we make choices; that is, decision making. Decision making refers to the process of using preferences, selecting and executing actions, and evaluating outcomes Even the most basic and seemingly inconsequential decisions can be very complex.

It is therefore not surprising that a discipline that may optimally elucidate such a complex process should owe its existence to the interaction of several parent disciplines — each, which in its own right underwent significant changes in the last half of the 20 th century The first set of shoulders that neuroeconomics stands on is the field of behavioral economics, led by Kahneman and Tversky, which challenged some of the assumptions in neoclassical economics during the s and s. A central concept in neoclassical economics used to explain economic behavior is that of utility.

Briefly, as Marshall 41 wrote in p. It has been already argued that desires cannot be measured directly, but only indirectly, by the outward phenomena to which they give rise: Preferences are therefore thought to be revealed through choice behavior governed by normative algorithms about how information was processed in making decisions.

Neuroeconomics: A bridge for translational research

The innovation led by Kahneman, Tversky and others, used ideas from psychology to demonstrate the limits of these normative principles — that is, normative principles fail in many instances to predict the actual choice behavior of humans. In parallel, cognitive neuroscience was undergoing a revolution due to the development of brain imaging technology that could map brain and mind functioning more proximally.

Animal studies as discussed in the current special issue by Chang, Barack, and Platt , in particular the work of Newsome and Glimcher, took the first steps towards demonstrating the correlation between neuronal activity and choice behavior in monkeys. Building on early work by Shizgal 42 , 43 , Platt and Glimcher 44 formalized for the first time an economic-mathematical approach for the physiological study of decision-making, which pointed to potential neurobiological constraints on the algorithmic processes involved in decision making described by behavioral economists It is at this point in the development of behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience that the new field of neuroeconomics was born.

For the first time, behavioral economic tasks, combined with neuroimaging techniques in humans and single-cell recordings in non-human primates, could be used to conduct algorithmic analyses of the physical mechanisms of choice in the brain. As it turns out, the physical mechanisms of choice in the brain appear to be largely located in the reward system of the brain.

In other words, for the first time we may be able to describe how neurons think in the same language we describe how the brain thinks at a neural network level. Rather, we mean with neuroecononmics the infusion of neuroscience with how economics models value and utility. In neuroeconomics, we use economic metaphors to study how neurons and neural networks make decisions. The reason for the excitement generated by neuroeonomics is therefore the fact that the metaphor of utility and value can be used across the different levels of explanation from cells to society, making this a rather unique field.

In applying this metaphor to psychiatry, we might then hypothesize that disturbances in the global valuation system of the brain is a major cause of psychiatric disorder Depending on the task constraints, such disturbances may be evident in increased or reduced brain activation in reward-related areas or may even be reflected in altogether alternative categorically different decision making strategies, for instance, the use of an altogether different reference point such that relative gains and losses are valued differently.

At this juncture it is important to highlight the boundaries of neuroeconomics. We do not believe that decision making and associated aberrations in reward processing underlies all of cognitive functioning and can explain the full behavioral phenotype of all psychiatric disorders. Decision making the main focus of neuroeconomics includes preference formation, action selection and execution and evaluation of outcomes.

This stands in contrast to other processes that are orthogonal to valuation, for instance, theory of mind reasoning. Theory of mind could be seen as logically antecedent to valuation. A pathology that undermines theory of mind of course affects value and choices, but not because of anomalous processing within the valuation system. Against this background, it is clear why neuroeconomics is promising for identifying reward-related biomarkers or endophenotypes in translation research.

In addition, limitations in current reward-focused work in psychiatric disorders point to several other reasons for applying a neuroeconomics approach to psychopathology. First, while simple stimulus-response approaches to reward processing are useful for understanding basic approach and avoidance behavior, it does not reflect the dynamic nature of real life interaction with the environment.

A major problem for those with psychiatric disorders is a difficulty responding to rewards in dynamic and context-appropriate ways. Neuroeconomic games allow for complex, dynamic ecologically more valid contexts to be created within which reward-related decision-making may be examined Also, basic neuroeconomics games allow for the modeling of the effects of beliefs and affect on reward processing. For instance, Delgado et al. Using the same neuroeconomic task, Sharp et al. Similarly, King-Casas et al.

Findings such as these are made possible because neuroeconomic tasks can mimic to some degree the complexities and uncertainties of decision-making in a rapidly changing social world. Indeed, the contribution of neuroconomic games may be the largest in the domain of social interaction reviewed in this special issue by King-Casas and Chiu where social-cognitive research using traditional methods has struggled to find ways to approximate real-life social interaction with ecological validity.

Second, the increased salience that neuroeconomic tasks offer is further illustrated by inconsistencies found in reward studies of depression. In one study, happy facial expressions did not elicit reduced reward activation in depressed patients 50 , which may be accounted for by reduced salience levels of the stimulus material used In contrast to passive viewing tasks, neuroeconomic tasks are designed to more closely mirror the physical mechanisms of reward processing by tapping directly into utility functions and may therefore be more salient — for instance, where outcome-uncertainty during anticipation in a monetary reward task is probed A third advantage of applying neuroeconomic approaches to psychopathology relates to the fact that after 30 years since the first PET study was published, there does not exist a single neuroimaging task that can be used to diagnose a psychiatric condition.

For neuroimiaging to fulfill this promise it will be necessary to develop experimental approaches with better discriminatory power regarding disorder-specific pathophysiology. In practice, this means that the same experimental paradigms should be used across different patient populations in contrast to disease-specific paradigms. Because neuroeconomics provides a unified framework within which to operationalize decision making, these tasks are ideally fit to this purpose. Applying the same neuroconomic games across disorders will advance clinical science by taking a first step in developing a new nosological classification system that links the variation of reward processing at the level of brain systems to psychopathological variation at the behavioral phenotypic level.

Neureoconomics may therefore provide standardized methods for indexing brain function that reflect the physiological processes of the reward system that are linked to the behavioral and cognitive deficits observed in mental disorders. We may therefore imagine a world where disorders are classified based on ways that underlying biological mechanisms fail, reward processing being only one such mechanism.

The use of the same neuroeconomic tasks across different disorders will also advance basic science by elucidating the fractionation of reward components. Of course, the domain of reward processing may be just one of several brain systems by which to reorganize psychopathology at the behavioral phenotypic level, alongside other functional domains. First, neuroeconomics-derived theoretical predictions about optimal adaptation adaptive goal achievement in a changing environment provide an objective metric to examine psychopathology as sub-optimal behavior Like any new interdisciplinary field, neuroeconomics is not without its weaknesses.

Authors invited to contribute to this special issue have been asked to comment on disorder-specific limitations of neuroeconomics and outline plans for future research to address these limitations. We thank the authors who have contributed to this special issue as well as the editors and external reviewers of Biological Psychiatry. The reviews presented here highlight what has been accomplished since the birth of neuroeconomics — a field which is only a decade old. It also serves as a useful foundation on which future research can be built. The application of neuroeconomics to psychopathology has only just begun.