No money in your bank account? Blame your brain.  Scientists in the emerging new field of neuroeconomics are making stunning discoveries about how the brain evaluates rewards, sizes up risks and calculates probabilities. Neuroeconomics is a combination of psychology, neuroscience and economics. It is a study on how people make decisions, how we use our brains and how the brain deals with money. In neuroeconomic experiments, full brain scans will be performed in order to compare the roles of the different brain areas that contribute to economic decision-making. It looks at the role of the brain when we evaluate decisions, categorize risks and rewards, and interact with each other. Neuroeconomists use devices, like MRIs, to observe the behavior of real people buying and selling things.  Armed with MRI scanners that measure blood flow in the brain and carefully structured games involving playing cards and real cash, both neuroscientists and economists have been watching what actually happens when people make economic decisions. Neuroeconomics can also be applied to investing and can help us understand how our brain affects our financial decisions. Neuroeconomics helps explain why people have such bizarre attitudes toward money. According to standard economic theory, money is a means to an end. When you get money, you shouldn’t experience immediate happiness. What all the scanning research is showing is that people get immediate pleasure and pain from obtaining and losing money.  For me, Neuroeconomics is an interesting subject and can be very helpful to investor.  Neuroeconomists also make experiments with investors and observe what’s happening inside the investor’s brain. WIth MRI scanners, neuroeconomist can observe the precise neural circuitry that switches on and off in our brains when, let’s say, we invest. Those scans make it clear that our investing brain often drives us to do things that make no logical sense but make perfect emotional sense,  because you, like every other human, are wired to crave what looks rewarding and shun what seems risky.  And when you win, lose or risk money, you stir up some profound emotions, including hope, surprise, regret, greed and fear.