Psychology students from all levels (BA to PostDoc) are welcome!

The whole event is free. No poster printing costs, no registration fee.

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Program at a glance // Detailed program // Proceedings.

 

 

PROGRAM

 

09:30 - 10:30 Postersession 1

10:30 - 10:45 Welcome

10:45 - 12:00 Keynote Lecture by

Jun.-Prof. Dr. phil. Christoph Korn (Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg)

"Neuro-computational models of multistep decision-making and social learning in humans"

12:00 - 13:00 Lunch break

13:00 - 14:00 Blitz Talks

14:00 - 15:00 Coffee Break & Poster Session 2

15:00 - 16:00 Science Slam

16:15 - 17:00 Awards & Prizes

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KEYNOTE LECTURE

Humans face many complex decision-making and learning situations in which the computation of optimal solutions challenges – or even surpasses – their cognitive capacities. Therefore, humans often resort to heuristic solutions. Formal models that adequately capture the neuro-cognitive mechanisms of the trade-offs between optimal and heuristic solutions are lacking. Here, I focus on two pertinent scenarios:

First, I will present a series of studies that show how humans combine optimal and heuristic solutions to maximize rewards in multistep decision scenarios which entail approach-avoidance-conflicts. Results obtained from behavioral modelling and functional neuroimaging suggest a role of the medial prefrontal cortex in the computation of the employed policies and of the uncertainty associated with relying on these policies.

Second, I will describe experiments that outline how humans learn about other people by updating their estimations about character traits. The best-fitting models combine principles derived from reinforcement learning algorithms with participants’ world knowledge about the distributions and interrelations of different character traits. Functional neuroimaging data show that these interrelations between character traits are represented in the medial prefrontal cortex.

Taken together, the to-be-presented projects aim at providing neuro-computational accounts of the trade-offs in complex decision-making and learning processes. I will briefly outline ongoing and future research projects that build on these insights to elucidate how decision-making and learning can go awry in psychiatric populations.

 

INTRODUCING OUR KEYNOTE SPEAKER

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