Bolton K. H. CHAU, Ph.D

时间： 2016-01-15 12:30 - 14:30

地点： Room 1113, Wang Kezhen Building

We make decisions almost at every single moment. While reading this abstract, you could be deciding whether you would spend the time to join my talk, to go for lunch or to stay in your office. Traditional rational choice theory makes assumptions that humans are rational beings and can always make optimal decisions. Although this view has been challenged over the recent decades, the precise predictions towards how rational choice theory is violated and the underlying neural mechanisms have been largely unclear. In this talk, I will describe how optimal or suboptimal decisions are made in the ventral prefrontal cortex (vPFC).

I will present data about how a specific region in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) of the ventral prefrontal cortex (vPFC) is important to cognitive flexibility for guiding optimal choices in a changing environment. This specific region connects dynamically with the amygdala for the exchange of task-relevant reward information. I will also talk about how people make suboptimal decisions when multiple options are offered and how the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) processes the options in surprising ways.

2016-01-15

2016-01-15