Chiu Lab

Led by principal investigator Pearl Chiu, Ph.D., the Chiu Laboratory examines the neuroscience of human motivation and social decision-making. Dr. Chiu’s work is also at the forefront of Computational Psychiatry, an emerging field that broadly applies quantitative model-based understandings of neural functioning to understand the neural and behavioral decision-making processes that break down in mental illness.

Techniques

Ongoing projects use multiple methods, including behavioral tasks, self-report, clinical interviews, computational models, and functional neuroimaging to:

• Study the neural substrates of how, when, and why humans make and change their decisions;
• Detail how these neurobehavioral systems are affected in disorders marked by difficulties in motivated decision-making (e.g., major depression, addiction, PTSD, autism)
• Develop biologically-informed interventions to remediate these functional deficits.