infonet-economy

Invasive recording of dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra and ventral tegmental area (SN/VTA) of behaving animals suggests a role for these neurons in reward learning and novelty processing. In humans, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is currently the only non-invasive event-related method to measure SN/VTA activity, but it is debated to what extent fMRI enables...

Reward and punishment have opposite affective value but are both processed by the cingulate cortex. However, it is unclear whether the positive and negative affective values of monetary reward and punishment are processed by separate or common subregions of the cingulate cortex. We performed a functional magnetic resonance imaging study using a free-choice task and compared cingulate...

People experience relief whenever outcomes are better than they would have been, had an alternative course of action been chosen. Here we investigated the neuronal basis of relief with functional resonance imaging in a choice task in which the outcome of the chosen option and that of the unchosen option were revealed sequentially. We found parametric activation increases in anterior...

Every day, individuals make dozens of choices between an alternative with higher overall value and a more tempting but ultimately inferior option. Optimal decision-making requires self-control. We propose two hypotheses about the neurobiology of self-control: (i) Goal-directed decisions have their basis in a common value signal encoded in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), and (...

Efficient recognition of odorous objects universally shapes animal behavior and is crucial for survival. To distinguish kin from nonkin, mate from nonmate and food from nonfood, organisms must be able to create meaningful perceptual representations of odor qualities and categories. It is currently unknown where and in what form the brain encodes information about odor quality. By...

We study the optimal accounting policy of a financially constrained firm that pledges assets to raise debt capital for financing a risky project. The accounting system provides information about the value of the collateral. Absent accounting regulation, the optimal accounting system is conditionally conservative: it recognizes an impairment loss if the asset value is below a certain...