Welcome to the Kayser Lab website.  We use functional MRI, computational models, pharmacology, and other tools in order to define (and influence) the cognitive and neural correlates of decision making.

Our work can be divided into three broad categories:

Higher order cognition

How are more abstract decisions represented within the brain?  Here we investigate decisions that require the assessment of hierarchical rules, social interactions, or other, often inferred, features.

Self regulation

How do we regulate our behavior in the face of different types of rewards? These studies evaluate decisions made with respect to monetary rewards, often in the setting of dopamine-related manipulations.

Perceptual decision making

Which brain networks mediate the translation from a low-level stimulus to a motor response? In this work we explore the neural mechanisms that mediate visual perceptual decisions.

Thank you to our funders: