Cancelled: Brain meeting: Professor Dominik Bach

Brain meeting 

Behaving appropriately under threat is key to survival. It also poses a range of interesting computational challenges unparalleled in other domains. A suggested solution to these demands is a computing architecture that relies on a multiplicity of tailored algorithms for specific threat scenarios. However, evidence for this suggestion is circumstantial in non-humans, and scarce in humans. In my talk, I will discuss the methodological problem of investigating threat avoidance in humans, and present pharmacological, clinical lesion, and neuroimaging data to support the validity of serious computer games as a way forward. Using different games that emulate a situation of approaching reward under threat (i.e. risky foraging), I triangulate a cognitive-computational algorithm for behavioral control in this scenario. This algorithm appears to be under instrumental and partly model-based control, with approximations of different granularity used in parallel. MEG data suggest some ideas about neural implementation.

There will be coffee, tea and cake in the conservatory directly after the talk.