New Trends in Decision-Making - Early Career Researcher Symposium

The objective of this symposium is to invite talented early career researchers to present their recent and/or ongoing work. We will also use the occasion to have the speakers tell us about their path through academia, and there will be ample time for questions not only about their research, but also about their experience of pursuing an academic career in a highly competitive research environment. Master students, PhD students and post-docs are more than welcome to attend and ask questions. Each talk will last 40 min, followed by 10 min of questions and answers.

Program 

09.30-10.20: Laura Dugué, Paris Descartes University

The rhythms of attention

Laura is an associate professor in the Vision group of the Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, teaching in the Biomedical Department at Paris Descartes University. She obtained her PhD in 2013 at the Centre de Recherche Cerveau & Cognition in Toulouse, under the supervision of Rufin VanRullen.

10.20-11.10: Nicholas Myers, University of Oxford

Flexible prioritization and competition in working memory

Nick is a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Attention group (headed by Mark Stokes) of the Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity. He obtained his PhD in 2015 in the Brain & Cognition Lab at the University of Oxford, under the joint supervision of Kia Nobre and Mark Stokes.

11.10-11.40: Coffee break in espace Curie, ground floor

11.40-12.30: Konstantinos Tsetsos, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf

Selective integration: the mechanistic basis and normative justification of decision irrationality

Konstantinos is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Donner Lab (headed by Tobias Donner) at the Department of Neurophysiology of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. He obtained his PhD in 2012 in the Department of Experimental Psychology of University College London, under the supervision of Marius Usher.
 

Abstracts

Laura Dugué, Paris Descartes University
The rhythms of attention

How does the brain process the large amount of information going through the retina at any moment in time? Visual attention is the process allowing selecting information for further processing, while ignoring other information. Attention is a fundamental cognitive function underlying human behavior. My research concentrates in understanding the spatio-temporal dynamics of visual attention in humans, using a combination of psychophysics and multimodal neuroimaging. I will present a series of experiments showing that attentional influence on behavioral performance fluctuates periodically over time, and that these fluctuations are supported by brain oscillations at the same frequency. Specifically, the attentional exploration of the visual environment is a rhythmic process, supported by theta (5-7 Hz) oscillations. I will further present evidence suggesting that this rhythm emerges from the communication between visual and higher-order, attentional regions. Finally, I will present a recent experiment aiming at comparing these dynamics between attentional systems.


Nicholas Myers, University of Oxford
Flexible prioritization and competition in working memory

Selective attention can help overcome the capacity limits of working memory (WM) by placing important information in the ‘focus of attention’, a representational state that improves recall accuracy. Such ‘internal’ attention to representations in working memory has been compared to ‘external’ attentional selection of stimuli in the environment. I will argue that prioritization in working memory may additionally rely on several other mechanisms, including the use of prospective coding instead of retrospective coding – that is, the representation of WM information in a representational format that is best suited to a rapid, context- appropriate behavioral response to an upcoming probe. I will also present a study using multivariate analysis of electrophysiological activity to examine flexible switching of information in and out of the focus of attention. The existence of multiple representational states in WM may help ensure that upcoming behavior is only guided by currently relevant information without interference from WM contents that are irrelevant now but may become important later.


Konstantinos Tsetsos, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf
Selective integration: the mechanistic basis and normative justification of decision irrationality

Humans violate rational choice theory but why they do so remains one of the largest mysteries within the cognitive and decision sciences. I will present a new model, dubbed selective integration, according to which decision irrationality stems from an attentional selection process that enhances the gain of processing of stronger inputs at the expense of weaker inputs. Although this attentional selection process leads to violations of axiomatic decision theory (such as violations of the axioms of transitivity and regularity) it has a normative justification: it nullifies the corrosive influence of late noise arising beyond the sensory stage. I will present a series of experiments, in which the ameliorative role of selective integration is confirmed, suggesting that apparently irrational decisions are a side effect of a rational evidence accumulation process. I will further present recent experiments, in which attention during choice tasks was either manipulated or measured, which confirmed the basic tenets of the selective integration theory. Using pharmacological MEG, I will allude to the neurochemical basis of selective integration. Specifically, I will show that the administration of a GABA-A receptor agonist in healthy individuals results in stronger selective integration and thus more pronounced decision irrationality patterns.