'Curious Conversations' podcast: Read Montague talks about brain chemistry and neuroeconomics
Read Montague joined Virginia Tech’s “Curious Conversations” to talk about the role of dopamine and serotonin in learning, motivation, memory, mood, and decision-making. He discussed his research on measuring dopamine and serotonin dynamics in the brain in real time using electrodes in epilepsy patients and explained the role neuroeconomics are playing in that research.
About Montague
Montague is the Virginia Tech Carilion Vernon Mountcastle Research Professor and the director of the Center for Human Neuroscience Research and the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC. His 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. Montague’s early theoretical work focused on the hypothesis that dopaminergic systems encode a particular kind of computational process, a reward prediction error signal, similar to those used in areas of artificial intelligence like optimal control.
Takeaways
- Measuring dopamine and serotonin dynamics in the brain is crucial for understanding mental health conditions and developing effective treatments.
- Neuroeconomics combines neuroscience and economics to study how the brain acts during decision-making.
- Human brains create models to assess information being provided from one another. Investigating the dopamine and serotonin dynamics at play in those models can provide valuable insights into how they work.
Learn more
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Read Montague to share groundbreaking brain research at Nobel symposium
About the podcast
"Curious Conversations" is a series of free-flowing conversations with Virginia Tech researchers that take place at the intersection of world-class research and everyday life. Produced and hosted by Travis Williams, assistant director of marketing and communications for the Office of Research and Innovation, university researchers share their expertise and motivations as well as the practical applications of their work in a format that more closely resembles chats at a cookout than classroom lectures. New episodes are shared each Tuesday.
