Imagination and the neurophysiology of decision making

Join us for a special talk by A. David Redish, neuroscience professor at the University of Minnesota, hosted the Center of Excellence in Computational Cognition (CoCo).

Abstract: Mathematical tools enable us to directly observe imagination, even in non-linguistic animals (such as rats).  Using these tools, we will examine decision-making processes that do and don't rely on imagination, including planning in approach-approach conflict situations, worry in approach-avoid conflict situations, and the development of habits in situations where planning is maladaptive.  Finally, if time permits, I will give an example where this fundamental science knowledge has practical policy consequences in the successful implementation of contingency management.

Bio: A. David Redish is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor and the J. B. Johnston Land Grant Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota. He earned his BA degree from Johns Hopkins in computer science and creative writing and his PhD from Carnegie Mellon in computer science. He has been on the faculty of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota since 2000. His work spans questions of decision-making from the theoretical to the experimental, and he is now working on clinical translations of that work. He is the author of over a hundred papers and four books, including Beyond the Cognitive Map: From place cells to episodic memory (MIT Press 1999) and The Mind within the Brain: How we make decisions and how those decisions go wrong (Oxford Univ Press 2013) and a co-edited book Computational Psychiatry: New Perspectives on Mental Illness with Joshua Gordon which appeared in 2016. His most recent book is Changing How We Choose: The new science of morality (MIT Press).