Symbolic Systems Forum - Brian Knutson, Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program

Brian Knutson, Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program, "Neural Computation of Expected Value"

ABSTRACT:

How do people decide what to do next? Psychologists and economists have argued that people must assess both the anticipated value and probability of outcomes in order to decide what to pursue. Recent advances in neuroimaging make it possible to visualize anticipatory changes in activity deep in the living human brain. In this talk, I will first review functional magnetic imaging research from our laboratory suggesting that a region of the subcortex called the nucleus accumbens plays an important role in anticipating value. Second, I'll describe new research suggesting that the prefrontal cortex may play a more prominent role in anticipating probability. The findings have implications for understanding phenomena in mental health, and possibly, for predicting economic behavior.

BIO:

Professor Knutson is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, and received his PhD. in Experimental Psychology from Stanford University in 1993. His primary research interest is the neural basis of emotion.