[BIC-announce] [Tomorrow: Special Feindel Brain Imaging Lecture] "Integrating decision systems: how the brain solves difficult problems" -- Dr. Quentin Huys; Wednesday, December 09, 2015 at 11:00 am; Bell Room, MNI

[Zografos Caramanos, Mr]

Please join us for a Special Feindel Brain Imaging Lecture:
Tomorrow morning at 11:00 am in the Bell Room


The Feindel Brain Imaging Lecture Series<https://www.mcgill.ca/bic/training-events/bic-feindel-lectures>
"Integrating decision systems: how the brain solves difficult problems"
Wednesday, December 09, 2015 at 11:00 am
Bell Room, Montreal Neurological Institute

[picture of me]
Dr. Quentin Huys, University of Zurich<http://quentinhuys.com/>
Quentin is a psychiatrist and computational neuroscientist. He works in the new field of computational psychiatry, whose goal is to model the dysfunctional neural processes that lead to psychiatric symptoms.

Title: Integrating decision systems: how the brain solves difficult problems

Abstract: Humans often face decision-making problems too complex to solve exactly, forcing them to deploy a variety of approximations and heuristics. Here, we use reinforcement-learning modelling to examine performance on a planning task in detail, revealing multiple interacting strategies. First, subjects use both the topology of the task and the rewards to establish sub-goals that nearly optimally reduce computational cost. Second, instead of recomputing solutions to difficult problems they re-use previous results, providing one path towards the establishment of macro-actions or options. Third, they reflexively prune decision-trees when encountering salient losses in their mental search. Fourth, an alternative framing of the decision problem in terms of meta-reasoning suggests an important role for model-free, Pavlovian values in guiding the allocation of resources. These results highlight how humans are able deploy a vast panoply of strategies to achieve good choice performance.

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