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SUMMARY:Risk and the Brain: The neural basis of decision making under unce
 rtainty - Professor John O'Doherty\, Trinity College Dublin
DTSTART:20100129T173000Z
DTEND:20100129T183000Z
UID:TALK19081@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Janet Gibson
DESCRIPTION:Biography\n\nProf. O'Doherty is currently the Thomas Mitchell 
 Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. His researc
 h is concerned with elucidating how the human brain is capable of making d
 ecisions under conditions of uncertainty.  To achieve this he applies psyc
 hological\, computational and economic theories to functional brain imagin
 g data\, as well as assessing the patterns of impairment in human patients
  with certain kinds of brain damage or neurological disease. Prof. O'Doher
 ty obtained his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Psychology at TCD 
 (1996)\, and then completed a D.Phil in Experimental Psychology at the Uni
 versity of Oxford (2001).  He was a Research Fellow at the Wellcome Depart
 ment of Imaging Neuroscience at University College London (2000-2004).  Fo
 llowing that he was Assistant and then Associate Professor of Psychology a
 t the California Institute of Technology (2004-2008).\n\nAbstract\n\n\nA d
 eeper understanding of “how” the brain makes decisions will not only i
 nspire new theories of decision making\, it will also contribute to the de
 velopment of genuine “artificial intelligence”\, and it will enable us
  to understand why some humans are better than others at making decisions\
 , why humans with certain psychiatric and neurological disorders are less 
 capable of doing so\, and why under some circumstances humans systematical
 ly fail to make “rational” decisions. In this talk I will provide an i
 ntroduction to our current understanding of how the human brain is able to
  make decisions under conditions of uncertainty. Most decisions made in ev
 eryday life are taken for the purposes of increasing our well-being\, whet
 her it is deciding what item to choose off a restaurant menu\, or delibera
 ting over what career path to follow. I will review converging evidence fr
 om contemporary neuroscience research to support the notion that the brain
  encodes basic computational signals necessary for taking such decisions i
 n a near optimal manner. Prominent amongst these is the value or "utility"
  of each decision option\, which indicates how advantageous a particular o
 ption is likely to be for our future well-being. Another relevant signal p
 resent in the brain is the riskiness attached to a particular decision opt
 ion\, which can influence the decision making mechanism according to one's
  own individual preferences (whether one is risk-seeking or risk-averse). 
  I will show where and how such signals are encoded in the brain\, review 
 how such signals come to learned from experience\, and highlight research 
 currently underway aiming to understand how such signals are compared and 
 integrated in order to ultimately generate choices.\n
LOCATION:LMH\, Lady Mitchell Hall
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