Paul W. Glimcher, PhD

The central goal of my laboratory is to develop and advance interdisciplinary models of human choice that combine insights from neuroscience, psychiatry, economics and psychology. Using methods ranging from interventional clinical trials, to brain imaging to computational models of neural calculations, the laboratory seeks to identify the brain-computations responsible for decision-making in health, aging, and disease. Our computational work defines how the brain achieves an efficient coding of value given its tremendous energetic efficiency. Our behavioral and fMRI work examines how these algorithms are implemented in healthy brains and how they go awry in pathology. Our clinical work has used these computational signatures to predict relapse in opiate use disorder, to monitor treatment progress in major depressive disorder and to identify the roots of post-traumatic stress disorder. In sum, the laboratory uses a broad range of empirical and theoretical tools in its effort to better understand both how people and animals choose and how to develop policies to maximize the welfare of humans and animals everywhere.