The Decision Neuroscience Lab investigates the principles of brain organization that underlie executive control, reasoning and decision making. Through a combination of human behavioral, computational modeling, functional neuroimaging (fMRI) and neuropsychological patient data, we try to uncover the mechanisms that shape higher cognitive processes and to develop predictive models of brain function that link neural systems to specific patterns of inference and behavior. An important motivation for our work is the development of a theoretically sound foundation for research on the relationship between disturbances of brain function and their manifestation as disorders of thought and behavior in psychiatric illness and neurological disease.

Our research examines the following major themes, which collectively fall under the emerging field of Decision Neuroscience.

• Executive Control and the Prefrontal Cortex
• Executive Control, Emotion and Decision Making
• Executive Control and Causal Reasoning
• Executive Control and Self-Deception