Dynamic Rationality: Bridging Neuroeconomics and Dynamical Systems in the Study of Choice

This paper develops a neurodynamic theory of economic decision-making, reframing preference, rationality, and choice as emergent properties of a nonlinear dynamical system. It argues that traditional and behavioral economic models remain fundamentally static, describing outcomes rather than the evolving processes that generate them. Integrating insights from neuroscience and dynamical systems theory, the study formalizes decision-making as a competition among neural populations within an attractor network. Preferences are conceived not as pre-existing utilities but as transient cognitive equilibria-momentary stabilizations within a continuously self-organizing neural field. The model explains behavioral anomalies such as framing and attraction effects as lawful bifurcations-topological shifts in the decision landscape induced by contextual perturbations and cognitive noise. Conceptually, it redefines rationality as metastability: the adaptive balance between coherence and flexibility in cognitive dynamics. By bridging micro-level neural mechanisms and macro-level economic behavior, the paper proposes a unified framework-Homo dynamicus-that situates economics within the broader science of complex adaptive systems.