i study how the brain uses what we know to figure out what options are worth. i’m especially interested in how we piece separate experiences together, and how that helps us judge something new. two ideas run through all of my work: cognitive maps and subjective value.
a street map shows how places relate, so you can plan a route you’ve never taken. a cognitive map is the brain’s version: an internal map of how things relate to each other. it can organize places, but also people or options, along whatever dimensions matter. this means relationships you already know can help answer questions you’ve never been asked.
an option’s value is how much it’s worth to you, and that depends on its features, your preferences, and what you expect to happen. you might pick a reliable café over an exciting but uncertain one; someone else might take the gamble. i study how the brain combines those pieces into a choice.
cognitive maps
we can’t store a value for every choice we might face. in our latest study, we found that entorhinal cortex and medial prefrontal cortex, regions that help the brain map how things relate, organize the ingredients of value in a way that lets us compare options we’ve never seen. these maps followed each person’s own preferences, not just the objective numbers. in a commentary on a study where people navigated by smell, we also wrote about which parts of these maps are shared across senses and which are specialized.
learning during rest (replay)
experiences come one at a time, in different places and situations. in a commentary, we wrote about how the brain might stitch them into one map during a break, by replaying them, and which experiences it might choose to replay to make later decisions easier.
learning on a breaksocial influence
my PhD work looked at how other people’s choices change what an option is worth to us, and when copying them becomes a shortcut. we studied teens choosing alongside peers, and people with damage to brain regions that help weigh risk.