Investigating the Behavioral and Neural Computations in Valuation and Decision-Making
MISSION
The Keiflin Lab is dedicated to investigating the mechanisms underlying value-based decision-making, both in adaptive and maladaptive conditions.
Our goal is to define how animals learn to predict rewards, how they learn to execute specific actions to obtain those rewards, and how these reward-seeking actions are regulated according to changing 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”
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 strong emphasis on the rigorous characterization of behavior.
Drawing on formal theories of associative learning and decision-making, we 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