eng Science and Education Publishing American Journal of Clinical Medicine Research 2328-403X 2013-12-03 1 4 71 74 10.12691/ajcmr-1-4-6 AJCMR2013146 article Masao Nagatsuka 1 Hideo Shinagawa sinagawa@iser.osaka-u.ac.jp 1 Yoshiyaka Okano 2 Yuri Kitamura 3 Tatsuyoshi Saijo 3 Research Center for Behavioral Economics, The Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), Osaka University, Osaka, Japan Department of Management, Kochi University of Technology, Kochi, Japan Department of Social and Environmental Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan Our study has shown that changes can be induced in human decision-making and emotions by using the PD and PDAS games. This suggests that economic games may provide a way to study cognitive functions in detail by analyzing the structure of the economic games using game theory. In addition, the combined use of economic games and neuroimaging techniques such as fNIRS, fMRI, and MEG may capture and quantify neural the substrates of various cognitive processes in a clinical setting. They might be effective in extracting human emotional ups and downs in the process of the decision-making. Further studies of economic games for patients with mental illness or brain damage are needed to explore this approach further. http://pubs.sciepub.com/ajcmr/1/4/6/ajcmr-1-4-6.pdf economic gamesprisoners' dilemmafNIRS