Research Interests:

My lab focuses on Neuroeconomics a.k.a. Decision Neuroscience, a nascent area that is at the interaction between neuroscience and social science disciplines. The broad goal of our research is to understand the neurobiological foundation of social decision-making at the mechanistic level. Our work uses neuroscience techniques (e.g. fMRI, lesion, and drug manipulation) and models of economic choice to identify neural substrates of complex social behavior, both in healthy populations and individuals with psychiatric illness. We have applied this approach to examine neurocomputational underpinnings of competition and corporation, as well as how such processes go awry in patients with PTSD, major depression, and brain lesions. 

Selected Publications:

1. Saez I, Zhu L, Set E, Kayser A, & Hsu M (2015). Prefrontal dopamine promotes human egalitarian behavior. Current Biology, 25(7): 912-919.

2. Zhu L, Jenkins A, Set E, Scabini D, Knight RT, Chiu PH, King-Casas B, & Hsu M (2014). Damage to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex affects tradeoffs between honesty and self-interest. Nature Neuroscience, 17(10), 1319-1321.

3. Zhu L, Mathewson K, & Hsu M (2012). Dissociable neural representations of reinforcement and belief prediction errors underlie strategic learning. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(5), 1419-1424.

4. Hsu M & Zhu L (2012). Learning in games: neural computations underlying strategic learning. Louvain Economic Review, 78(3): 47-72.

5. Zhu L, Walsh D, & Hsu M (2012). Neuroeconomic measures of social decision-making across the lifespan. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 6(128).

Lab Website:

lushazhu.com (VPN needed in China)