Hot coffee or cold brew? Pizza or pasta for dinner? These are the decisions that guide our everyday lives. What computations do our brains make when weighing these choices?
At Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute, Akram Bakkour, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research scientist in the Shohamy lab, investigates the ways in which our brain incorporates our memories and past experiences into the everyday decision-making process. He and his Zuckerman Institute collaborators, including Principal Investigators Daphna Shohamy, Ph.D., and Michael Shadlen, MD, Ph.D., recently found that the hippocampus, the brain’s memory center, plays a central role in this deliberation process. These findings were published in the journal eLife.
Reference: “The hippocampus supports deliberation during value-based decisions” by Akram Bakkour, Daniela J Palombo, Ariel Zylberberg, Yul HR Kang, Allison Reid, Mieke Verfaellie, Michael N Shadlen and Daphna Shohamy, 3 July 2019, eLife.
DOI: 10.7554/eLife.46080.001
Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.
Follow us on Google and Google News.