Decision-making and Neuroeconomics

Decision-making is the process of choosing one out of several alternatives. The study of decision-making is inherently multidisciplinary and can be approached from many different angles. Traditional accounts in economics and biology have a normative flavour and prescribe, rather than describe decision-making. Recently, however, efforts in psychology and behavioural ecology have resulted in the development of theories with higher descriptive validity. Furthermore, neuroeconomics is a new interdisciplinary field that combines contributions from economics, biology and psychology and aims to identify a biologically valid, mechanistic, mathematical and behavioural theory of choice and exchange. Recent neurophysiological advances have further deepened our understanding of the mechanistic implementation of a decision in the brain.