Daeyeol Lee

Daeyeol Lee

Johns Hopkins University

“Playing Games in the Brain”

NYU Department of Economics
19 W 4th Street, Room 517

Abstract

Social animals face the challenging task of predicting the actions of others.  Game theory formalizes the decision making in social settings, and reinforcement learning theories can be applied to understand the cognitive processes involved in iterative social interactions. In this talk, I will review the neural correlates of such iterative learning in primate prefrontal cortex during simple competitive games, such as the rock-paper-scissors, as well as a more cognitively complex board game, such as the 4-in-a-row. The results from these experiments demonstrate the advantage of formal games in deciphering the neurocomputational mechanisms of decision making and planning.

Speaker Bio 

Daeyeol Lee is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience and of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. His lab studies decision neuroscience, reinforcement learning, neural coding, timing, and music and the brain.