Dr. Cameron Hassall: Friday, January 20 @ 10:30am – 12pm in Botterell Hall B147
Let’s Get Real: The Importance of Ecologically Valid Neuroscience
The neural basis of learning and decision making is traditionally studied using simple tasks in highly controlled laboratory settings. This is a problem because the real world is complex and unpredictable (think "pandemic"). One solution is to move towards ecologically valid experiments that do a better job of emulating naturalistic environments. In this research talk I will present three experiments that illustrate the benefits and challenges of this approach. I will show that although ecologically valid experiments can teach us a lot about how the brain supports learning and decision making, their use often requires developing new analysis approaches. These analysis approaches are worth developing, however, because they often inspire interesting new research questions. These issues will be discussed in the context of a broader research program aimed at understanding learning and decision making from an ecological perspective.
