Title: Decision Making and Reward

Speaker: Prof. Ray Dolan, Max Planck-UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing, UCL

Time：13:00-15:00, September 14, 2018

Location: Room 1113, Wang Kezhen Building

Abstract:

How we make decisions seems on the surface a simple operation. Accumulating evidence indicates that our choices are the result of complex processes that depend on multiple control systems. These include Pavlovian, Habitual and Goal directed control. I will outline this framework and provide evidence for the operation of each of these controllers human choice behaviour. I will also consider how a dominance or loss of function in one or other of these systems relates to common human behavioural dispositions, focusing on an appetite for risk. In this context I will also outline a non-learning role for dopamine. In the final part of my talk I will consider how decision making relates to the wider question of how we build mental models of the world. Here I will discuss a potential mechanistic account that is grounded in what is known as neural replay, including a consideration of the role played by reward in the expression of replay.

Host PI: Prof. Shihui Han