Research

Value-based decision-making behaviors

We study value-based decision-making behaviors, as all major classes of neuropsychiatric disorders are characterized by disordered reward processing. Because many cognitive variables are latent (i.e. internal to the animal), we use computational modeling and carefully designed behavioral tasks to relate internal variables to neural signals and behavior. We draw much of our inspiration from cognitive psychology studies performed in humans (for instance, in the domains of behavioral economics and model-based reinforcement learning), but bring sophisticated circuit-based techniques in rodents to bear on those problems. We seek to uncover the granular circuit mechanisms that support complex cognitive computations.