A neuroimaging study on how experience shapes the investor’s brain

Abstract

Economics have failed to create theories of choice that allow us to accurately predict human behavior under all circumstances. To answer the question on how investors decide, we need to go beyond abstract models based on what is rational given that our rationality is computationally bounded. For this reason, studies in Neuroeconomics have begun to gain knowledge into what are the underlying neurobiological processes of decision-making that guide a person to make some economic decisions and not others. In most cases, these researches have been based on regions of interest, ruling out all the information that whole-brain analyses can bring. This thesis tries to approach the understanding of investment decision-making from a slightly different perspective. As our brain is plastic and it can change according to our experiences, we are going to analyze the investor’s brain to find differences in their decision-making process and if there are any, determine which brain areas are responsible for their investment behaviors.