Center for Human Neuroscience Research
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Read Montague, Ph.D. , homeThe Virginia Tech Carilion Vernon Mountcastle Research Professor and Director of the Center for Human Neuroscience Research
About the Center for Human Neuroscience Research
Fralin Biomedical Research Institute scientists in this Center work with volunteer research participants from Roanoke, Blacksburg, and the surrounding communities to understand decision-making, behavior, and brain function and disorders in humans. Researchers in this Center have pioneered new approaches to human neuroimaging, including hyperscanning and magnetoencephalography using optically pumped magnetometry, as well as techniques to record and detect real-time fluctuations in neurochemicals while participants complete decision-making tasks. Led by Read Montague, Ph.D., the Center includes the Computational Psychiatry Unit, Human Neuroimaging Laboratory, and the Human Magnetometry Laboratory.
Connecting neuroscience to economics
Psychology and economics have successfully demonstrated that human behavior is not endlessly variable, but can be captured and quantified by testable laws. Modern neuroscience techniques can identify and link individual differences in decision-making behavior to differences in brain anatomy, brain responses, genetics, and so on. In particular, modern neuroimaging techniques provide the means by which human brain responses can be monitored while subjects are engaged in economic-based behavioral tasks. Our lab has been employing this methodology to study well-quantified group behavioral scenarios in which monetary outcomes vary depending on how people cooperate, compete, or punish others.
The goal of this work is centered on the idea of valuation, especially neural valuation. Valuation is a central concept in economics. In this domain, the value of goods must be put on a common scale in order to compare, contrast, and prioritize their value. In this context, the idea of a currency provides just such a common valuation scale.
Neural valuation and its connection to decision-making
Nervous systems are also equipped with rapid, online valuation systems. These valuation systems equip a mobile creature with a capacity to rank (prioritize) stimuli and internal states. Without valuation systems, a creature would be unable to assess the behavioral value of attending to some stimulus or carrying out some behavior. Rapid valuation is also intimately connected to decision-making mechanisms embedded in nervous systems. Creatures tend to make decisions that lead to more valuable outcomes. From this point of view, it is easy to see that pathologies of valuation will underlie a large number of behavioral abnormalities. These include drug addiction, various forms of mental illness, and even milder developmental behavioral disorders. For example, drug addicts have a serious problem with decision-making algorithms. Otherwise, why would an addict decide to sacrifice biological sustenance in order to put alcohol in their blood or cocaine in their nose? Some of the theoretical frameworks in economics are very useful in uncovering valuation and decision-making mechanisms in the human brain. This is the sense in which Neuroeconomics addresses important, but relatively untested issues related to neural function. Better understanding in this area has broad implications in many fields.
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Casas Lab , homeThe King-Casas Lab addresses two broad areas of inquiry: (1) neural underpinnings of valuation and learning in social settings, and (2) how social and economic preferences influence valuation and learning.
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Chiu Lab , homeThe Chiu Laboratory examines the neuroscience of human motivation and social decision-making.
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LaConte Lab , homeResearch in the LaConte lab is devoted to advanced neuroimaging acquisition and data analysis approaches, aimed at basic scientific discovery as well as understanding and rehabilitating neurological and psychiatric diseases.
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Legon Lab , homeThe Legon Lab studies modulation of the human brain via focused ultrasound.
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Montague Lab , homeThe Montague Lab's work focuses on computational neuroscience – the connection between physical mechanisms present in real neural tissue and the computational functions that these mechanisms embody.
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