About this Research Topic

Background

Neuroeconomics undertakes the anatomical and physiological manifestations of the cognitive description of preferences that govern reward and risk-taking behavior processing for stimulating real-life decision-making. The identifying feature that boosts neuroeconomics theories combines behavioral economic studies with neuroimaging techniques. These propositions have spurred unusual model-based probes of reward processing in healthy humans. It has a high probability of proxying for discovering novel endophenotypes indicative of the biological underpinnings of neurological and psychiatric disorders. Understanding of psychopathology is provided by the transdiagnostic aspect of neuroeconomics in abnormal reward processing elements, which may pertain to subjective valuation, temporal discounting, hedonics, and reinforcement learning.



A two-premised reductionist method of social science is evident in neuroeconomics. First, economic, psychological, and neuroscientific levels of study can be used to construct explanatory systems for characterizing human choice behavior. Second, the mappings between these levels of explanation will be accurate and clear. Studies of decision-making at any of these levels can be utilized to inform and constrain explanatory models developed at other levels if both of these hypotheses are true. Neuroeconomic approaches may help in defining psychological models for the diagnosis and treatment of psychopathology. Numerous neural components of risk-reward processing systems show variations in psychopathology and are not substantially explained by homogenous concepts. Neuroeconomics offers insights into explaining the Neuroeconomics approach and can demonstrate the reward processing in psychopathology, which is typically interpreted as a general hypo- or hyperresponsivity to reward. The selective changes in reward-related behavior seen in various types of psychopathology can be caused by several processing anomalies, including (mal)adaptive scaling and anchoring, the dysfunctional weighting of reward and cost variables, competition between valuation systems, and reward prediction error signaling. Economic decision theory has the ability to investigate a variety of interacting components of the same paradigm in terms of motivational internal human forces. Therefore, it is easier to characterize the motivational factors that enhance the risk of developing psychiatric disorders and to understand the onset of psychiatric symptoms. Research in this area shall bring novelty in bringing out the psychiatric endophenotypes. Neuroeconomic studies open vistas to allow the examination of psychopathology as a deviation from optimal behavior because they have tangible conceptions of optimal behavior. The contributions may employ qualitative, quantitative, experimental, and mixed methods approach while addressing the “Translational neuroeconomic approach: From economic decision making to neuropsychological disorders”. The disorders covered may include (but are not limited to) the following:

- Impulsive disorders

- Bipolar disorder

- Autism

- Schizophrenia

- Eating disorders

- Depression

- ADHD

- Parkinson Disease

- Alzheimer Disease

Research papers eligible for this special issue shall contribute to the literature in the following ways:

- provide an “in-depth” study of the psychopathological processes;

- discuss/reflect on neuroeconomic approaches of research practice (i.e., what we can learn from applying selected game theory methods);

- are critical (i.e., broadly concerned with understanding the relationship between neuroeconomic parameter and behavioral correlates of the disease);

- are context-oriented;

- provide an “in-depth” account of key aspects of the research methodology applied and the challenges involved (e.g., methods used, how and why part, and results adopting a particular neuroeconomic research strategy)neuro-psychopathology of many diseases by parametrizing the economic agency and behavior experiments as depicted in choice-making behavior.

Keywords: neuroeconomics, neuroimaging, decision making, game theory, neuropsychological disorders, impulsive, dopamine

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