Date	2015-04-01
Time	12:00 - 13:00
E-mail	ednu@ied.edu.hk
Venue	HKIEd Tai Po Campus B3-LP-04

EDNU April Research Seminar: Neural mechanisms underlying optimal and suboptimal decision making   Date: 1 Apr 2015 (Wed) Time: 12:00 - 13:00 Venue: HKIEd Tai Po Campus B3-LP-04 Speaker: Dr. Bolton Chau (Department of Psychology, HKU)     We make decisions almost at every single moment. While reading this abstract, you could be deciding whether you would spend the time to join my talk, to go for lunch or to stay in your office. Traditional rational choice theory makes assumptions that humans are rational beings and can always make optimal decisions.  Although this view has been challenged over the decades, the precise predictions towards how rational choice theory is violated and the underlying neural mechanisms have been largely unclear.  In this talk, I will describe how optimal and suboptimal decisions are made between two options and multiple options. I will present my data obtained from human and monkey neuroimaging, as well as computational modelling.   Bolton Chau is a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong.  He obtained his DPhil degree from University of Oxford early this year.  Bolton’s research focus is on the neural mechanisms underlying decision making, reinforcement learning and neuroplasticity.  He is one of the earliest researchers in Oxford that employs task-based fMRI in monkeys for neuroscience research.