In a broad sense, my research goals are all very philosophically motivated. I believe that coming to understand how we make decisions can tell us a lot about what sorts of creatures we are, and hint at the proper way to think about concepts like self-identity, free-will, and consciousness. Or maybe I just like to think I'm still a philosopher.
Persistence
Paper under review
Decisions often require persistent commitment after the initial decision period. Persistence is a key component of self-control, yet has been so far unstudied at the neural level. I am looking at the activity of individual neurons within the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex during the persistence period of a decision, to try to characterize the neural mechanisms of persistence.
Delay Discounting
Paper under review
Many previous studies of non-human subjects have reported extremely high rates of temporal discounting - valuing a future reward much less than an immediate one. Could these high rates of discounting be explained by a combination of natural foraging behaviour and bounded rationality, rather than impulisivity?
The Value of Information
Poster presented at SFN 2012
We are often curious and seek information, even when that information will cost us and confer no benefit. Is the value of information encoded in the brain the same way other rewards are, or is it fundamentally different? Why do we seek information when it offers no benefit?
Neuro-Foraging
See me give a talk in the Neuro-Foraging workshop at Cosyne, 2013
Foragers in the wild need to make decisions quickly, calculating which prey confer the greatest payoff, taking into account the opportunity cost of pursuing a given prey. What are the neural mechanisms of these sorts of foraging behaviours?
Attention Allocation
Previous research has shown that babies allocate their attention to optimize learning - preferentially attending to information that is not too simple and not too complex. Does this extend beyond babies?
