Seminar: Neurobiology of Social Decision Making

Date: 9 December 2011

Time: 3.30pm – 5.30pm

Venue: CSI Meeting Room (Nanyang Business School S3-B3-C)

Address: 52 Nanyang Ave, Singapore 639798

About the Speakers

Brooks King-Casas

Brooks King-Casas, PhD has expertise in the application of game-experimental paradigms to understand the neural substrates of social behavior in large cohorts of normative and psychiatric individuals. This approach takes advantage of computational descriptions of multi-agent interactions from game theory and experimental economics to examine neurobiological signals underlying complex social behavior, including cooperation and competition. This work has shed light onto the neural computations underlying reciprocal exchange (King-Casas et al., Science, 2005), and has similarly revealed aberrant neurobehavioral strategies underlying personality disorders (King-Casas et al., Science, 2008). Dr. King-Casas holds dual appointments at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, as well as the Salem VA Medical Center.

His web profile is at: http://research.vtc.vt.edu/employees/brooks-king-casas/

Pearl Chiu

Pearl Chiu, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Tech and in the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute and also Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Departments of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston TX. She received her PhD from Harvard University and completed her clinical psychology internship in the Adult Neuroscience track at BCM. Pearl Chiu’s Lab examines the neurobiology of human motivation and social decision-making. Her Lab focuses on how such processes may be perturbed and rehabilitated in psychiatric populations.

Her web profile is at: http://filebox.vt.edu/users/chiup/VTChiuLab/index.html