Decision Making

Benedetto De Martino

Group Leader

benedettodemartino@gmail.com

Visit our website: http://www.bdmlab.org

Decision Making Research

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” - J.K.Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”

The goal of our group is to develop a mechanistic understanding of the neural computations underpinning the decision making process across a broad range of domains such as perceptual, economic and social choice. We approach this question by combining computational modelling with experimental economics, psychophysics and brain imaging methods.

Group Members

PhD Students

Mariana Zurita Soler

m.zurita@ucl.ac.uk

I am a Biotech Engineer from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where I also got my MSc in Engineering. My thesis focused on developing machine learning classifiers based on Brain MRI to better understand multiple sclerosis. I’m currently investigating the difference between perceptual and value-based decisions.

MSc/MRes students

Amy Benson

a.benson.17@ucl.ac.uk

I have studied Psychology at Newcastle University and am now a masters student on the Cognitive Neuroscience MSc programme at UCL. I am interested in how our memories contribute to the decisions that we make and will work with eye tracking. I am particularly interested in the link between value judgements and memory, and the level of confidence that we have in our decisions.

Mihaela Nemes

mihaela.nemes.17@ucl.ac.uk

I am a Genetics graduate from University of York, where I focused on the overlap between molecular biology and neuroscience. I put great emphasis on both multidisciplinarity and research in itself, and I was eager to extrapolate my biological understanding of the brain to a cognitive perspective. This led to my academic journey on an MRes in Brain Sciences at UCL. I currently investigate the phenomena of confidence-leak in humans where I employ diverse psychophysical and neurobiological methods to better understand the roots of overconfidence, and how overconfidence may bias our everyday decisions.

Group Alumni

Thomas Folke

tomas.folke@gmail.com

My work aims to understand what the benefits (and costs) are of being aware of one’s confidence in a given decision.

Paula Kaanders

p.kaanders@ucl.ac.uk

I study how people gather information that is used to guide decisions and how this shapes our sense of confidence

Visiting Researcher

Ali Shiravand

ali.shiravand@ens.fr

I’m a PhD student in Cognitive Neuroscience at the École Normale Supérieure Paris. Coming from a computer science background, my research focuses on behavioural and computational modelling of human value-based decision-making. As part of my thesis, I’m visiting the Decision Making Group to work on multi-goal reinforcement learning: how people shape values in different contexts, and how they are able to generalise the learned values across multiple goals.