Lunch @UCBerkeley with Ming Hsu – The neural mechanisms underlying decision-making

Lunch @UCBerkeley with Ming Hsu – The neural mechanisms underlying decision-making

We are all consumers in one way or another. This involves making choices, ranging from weighty ones such as purchasing a home to routine ones such as grocery shopping. An understanding of the biological basis of consumer choice is important not only scientifically, but also clinically because of disruptions of decision-making processes in neuropsychiatric disorders. Ming Hsu studies these questions by combining ideas and tools from neuroscience, economics, psychology and marketing. By looking at social decision-making through the lens of game theory, he is able to capture an important class of competitive and cooperative social behaviors that are often disrupted in disorders such as schizophrenia and frontotemporal dementia.

In his research, he attempts to characterize the underlying neural systems as well as molecular and genetic mechanisms. He combines functional MRI to characterize the neural correlates of putative computational variables driving behavior, identifies how genomic variation modifies circuits of neurons and the molecular pathways, and develops computational models out of behavioral economics and computational neuroscience to provide for rigorous, quantitative predictions that can be tested across behavioral, neural and genetic levels. For more information, check out his Neuroeconomics Laboratory website, http://neuroecon.berkeley.edu/.

#neuromarketing

Registration is required.