NEUROECONOMICS – DECISION MAKING AND THE BRAIN, P.W. Glimcher, C.F. Camerer, E. Fehr and R.A. Poldrack, Elsevier Academic Press, London, 2009, 538 pages, ISBN 978-0-12-374176-9

Neuroeconomics, which is both the subject and title of this book by Paul Glimcher and his collaborators, has been a vague and weakly defined term used by economists, psychologists and neuroscientists in recent years. It is now beginning to grow into a more defined field, trying to integrate economic theories of decision making, psychological insights on people’s behaviour and understanding of neural functioning in the human brain. Using synergies between those three approaches, neuroeconomics seeks to explain choice behaviour in the terms of brain processing. The main tool of this analysis has been the use of brain scan images recorded during human decision making in experiments. The brain pictures are consequently related to and interpreted in the context of revealed decisions that were taken at the time of the recording. Furthermore, the data generated on human subjects is supplemented with insights from experiments on animal behaviour, an approach with a long-lasting tradition in psychological and neuroscientific research.