Seminar by Krishna Prasad Miyapuram
Neuroeconomics of reward processing
Krishna Prasad Miyapuram
Univeristy of Trento, Italy
Date: Thursday, March 10th, 2011
Time: 5:00 PM
Venue: CS101.Abstract:
Neuroeconomics is the newly emergent multidisciplinary field combining psychology, economics and neuroscience studying the phenomenon of 'how people make decisions'. In an uncertain environment, an adaptive organism must learn to predict the occurrence of future events, which is essential for survival and enables the organism to make optimal decisions and prepare appropriate behavioural responses. Computational models have emphasised the role of prediction error in learning process. Neurophysiological studies have identified dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain that respond to prediction error during associative learning of positively reinforcing stimuli (rewards). Brain imaging studies investigating neural representations post-learning will be presented and the results discussed from a systems neuroscience point of view.
About the speaker:
Krishna Prasad (Miyapuram) has an interdisciplinary background with Masters in Electronics and Artificial Intelligence. His research area during last 10 years is primarily in the field of cognitive neuroscience. After PhD from Cambridge University, he has worked in consumer industry at Unilever in Netherlands. Beginning this year,he will be working as postdoctoral fellow at Univeristy of Trento in Italy.