Month: September 2021

Stefano Palminteri
Department of Cognitive Studies
École normale supérieure

I will present results from seven experiments (N=100 each) demonstrating that, in the context of human learning decision-making, the way in which options are arranged (i.e., the choice architecture) significantly affects the resulting memory representations of economic values. More specifically, economic values stored in memory do not reflect objective values, but are generally consistent with a partial range adaptation process. The results are robust across preference elicitation methods (choices or ratings), decision-making modalities (experience-based or description-based), and across days.

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Anne Collins
Department of Psychology
University of California, Berkeley

The study of the neural processes that support reinforcement learning has been greatly successful. It has characterized a simple brain network (including cortico-basal ganglia loops and dopaminergic signaling) that enables animals to learn to make valuable choices, using valenced outcomes. However, increasing evidence shows that the story is more complex in humans, where additional processes also contribute importantly to learning. In this talk, I will show three examples of how prefrontal-dependent executive processes are essential to reinforcement learning in humans, operating both in parallel to the brain’s reinforcement learning network, as well as feeding this network information.

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Kean Hsu
Department of Psychiatry
Georgetown University

Impairments in basic cognitive processes like attention and executive functioning are common, significant, and an unmet treatment need that has broad downstream effects for depressed individuals. However, the nature of these impairments and how they might lead to negative affect or clinical disorder remains poorly understood. This talk presents empirical data addressing three lines of questioning: 1) Is cognitive impairment a scar left by depression or does it potentially precede depression (or both); 2) how are difficulties with basic cognitive processes associated with the phenomenology of depression; and 3) does an experimental manipulation of these processes impact depression maintenance? To address these questions, I have assessed cognition in a variety of depressed populations, including monozygotic twin pairs discordant for lifetime depression, currently depressed, formerly depressed, and never-depressed individuals drawn from the community, and a sample of depressed individuals specifically expressing a cognitive process of interest. Future directions for this program of research, including identification of which cognitive processes contribute to the risk for, maintenance of, and impairment from emotional disorders, as well as how we can translate these findings in applied settings, will be reviewed.

View this recorded session here. Password for recording is: mr+6E.!t