Investigating the Behavioral and Neural Computations in Valuation and Decision-Making
MISSION
The overarching research goal in the Keiflin Lab is to understand how value-based decisions are made;
how animals learn to predict rewards, how they learn to execute specific actions to obtain rewards, and how these reward-seeking actions are regulated to meet specific contextual demands. We seek to answer these questions at the psychological, computational, and neural levels of analysis.
APPROACH
“Nothing in neurobiology makes sense —except in the light of behavior”
G.M. Shepherd
We believe that to understand how the brain makes decisions, we need to know what goes into the making of a decision —what cognitive/computational operations are carried out by the decision-maker.
This is why our lab places great emphasis on the characterization of behavior. We draw inspiration from formal theories of associative learning and decision-making to design well-controlled behavioral paradigms that constrain and isolate specific cognitive/computational processes.
We combine this behavioral approach with a suite of neuroscience tools for in-vivo monitoring and/or manipulation of neural activity in defined neural circuits (e.g. optogenetics, chemogenetics, fiberphotometry)
VALUES
Artwork by Sammy Katta