infonet-economy

The possible impact upon human visual cortex from saccades to remembered target locations was investigated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A specific location in the upper-right or upper-left visual quadrant served as the saccadic target. After a delay of 2,400 msec, an auditory signal indicated whether to execute a saccade to that location (go trial) or to cancel...

Decision making under risk is central to human behavior. Economic decision theory suggests that value, risk, and risk aversion influence choice behavior. Although previous studies identified neural correlates of decision parameters, the contribution of these correlates to actual choices is unknown. In two different experiments, participants chose between risky and safe options. We...

When making choices under uncertainty, people usually consider both the expected value and risk of each option, and choose the one with the higher utility. Expected value increases the expected utility of an option for all individuals. Risk increases the utility of an option for risk-seeking individuals, but decreases it for risk averse individuals. In 2 separate experiments, one...

Delayed rewards lose their value for economic decisions and constitute weaker reinforcers for learning. Temporal discounting of reward value already occurs within a few seconds in animals, which allows investigations of the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms. However, it is difficult to relate these mechanisms to human discounting behavior, which is usually studied over days...

This chapter reviews the extracellular studies of dopamine neurons in behaving animals. Topics covered include motor functions of dopamine neurons, reward functions of dopamine neurons, reward learning functions of dopamine neurons, economic value functions of dopamine neurons, and attention and novelty functions of dopamine neurons.

A set of face stimuli called the NimStim Set of Facial Expressions is described. The goal in creating this set was to provide facial expressions that untrained individuals, characteristic of research participants, would recognize. This set is large in number, multiracial, and available to the scientific community online. The results of psychometric evaluations of these stimuli are...