Decision Neuroscience

Decision Neuroscience addresses fundamental questions about how the brain makes perceptual, value-based, and more complex decisions in non-social and social contexts. This book presents compelling neuroimaging, electrophysiological, lesional, and neurocomputational models in combination with hormonal and genetic approaches, which have led to a clearer understanding of the neural mechanisms behind how the brain makes decisions. The five parts of the book address distinct but inter-related topics and are designed to serve both as classroom introductions to major subareas in decision neuroscience and as advanced syntheses of all that has been accomplished in the last decade.

Part I is devoted to anatomical, neurophysiological, pharmacological, and optogenetics animal studies on reinforcement-guided decision making, such as the representation of instructions, expectations, and outcomes; the updating of action values; and the evaluation process guiding choices between prospective rewards. Part II covers the topic of the neural representations of motivation, perceptual decision making, and value-based decision making in humans, combining neurcomputational models and brain imaging studies. Part III focuses on the rapidly developing field of social decision neuroscience, integrating recent mechanistic understanding of social decisions in both non-human primates and humans. Part IV covers clinical aspects involving disorders of decision making that link together basic research areas including systems, cognitive, and clinical neuroscience; this part examines dysfunctions of decision making in neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, behavioral addictions, and focal brain lesions. Part V focuses on the roles of various hormones (cortisol, oxytocin, ghrelin/leptine) and genes that underlie inter-individual differences observed with stress, food choices, and social decision-making processes. The volume is essential reading for anyone interested in decision making neuroscience.

With contributions that are forward-looking assessments of the current and future issues faced by researchers, Decision Neuroscience is essential reading for anyone interested in decision-making neuroscience.

• Provides comprehensive coverage of approaches to studying individual and social decision neuroscience, including primate neurophysiology, brain imaging in healthy humans and in various disorders, and genetic and hormonal influences on decision making
• Covers multiple levels of analysis, from molecular mechanisms to neural-systems dynamics and computational models of how we make choices
• Discusses clinical implications of process dysfunctions, including schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, eating disorders, drug addiction, and pathological gambling
• Features chapters from top international researchers in the field and full-color presentation throughout with numerous illustrations to highlight key concepts

Established researchers, undergraduate and graduate students in cognitive neuroscience, behavioral neuroscience, neurobiology, neuroeconomics, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, systems neuroscience, model-based neuroimaging, computational neuroscience, probabilistic models of decision making.

Preface

1. Anatomy and connectivity of the reward circuit

2. Electrophysiological correlates of reward processing in dopamine neurons

3. Representations of appetitive and aversive information in the primate

4. Ventral Striatum involved in appetitive and aversive motivational processes

5. Reward and decision encoding in Basal Ganglia: insights from optogenetics studies in rodents

6. The neural bases of the learning and motivational processes that control goal-directed behavior

7. Impulsivity, risky choice and impulse control disorders: animal models

8. Prefrontal cortex in decision making: the perception-action cycle

9. Reward, value and salience

10. Computational principles of value coding in the brain

11. Spatiotemporal characteristics of perceptual decision making in the human brain

12. Perceptual decision making

13. Neural circuit mechanisms of economic decision-making

14. Social decision-making in Nonhuman Primates

15. Organization of the social brain in macaques and humans

16. The neural bases of social influence on valuation and behavior

17. Social dominance representations in the human brain

18. Reinforcement learning and strategic reasoning during social decision making

19. Neural control of social decisions: Causal evidence from brain stimulation studies

20. The neuroscience of compassion and empathy and their link to prosocial motivation and behaviour

21. Can models of reinforcement learning help us to understand symptoms of schizophrenia?

22. A neuropsychological perspective on the role of the prefrontal cortex in value-based decision-making

23. Opponent Brain Systems for Reward and Punishment Learning: Causal Evidence From Drug and Lesion Studies in Humans

24. Decions-making and impulse control disorders in Parkinson disease

25. The subthalamic nucleus in impulsivity

26. Decision-making in anxiety and its disorders

27. Decision-Making in Gambling Disorder: Understanding Behavioral Addictions

28. Decision-making in fish: Genetics and social behavior

29. Imaging genetics in humans: Major depressive disorder and decision-making

30. Time-dependent shifts in neural systems supporting decision making under stress

31. Oxytocin’s influence on social decions-making

32. Appetite as Motivated Choice: Hormonal and Environmental Influences

33. Perspectives