Together with the Oxford University Society of Biomedical Sciences (OUSBMS), we are co-organising a talk by Prof Rafal Bogacz at the end of this Michaelmas term. Tickets are usually £3 for non-members of the OUSBMS, but any member of the Cortex Club can attend for free (just show one of our emails to demonstrate membership). There will be snacks, drinks and Prosecco!

Talk Title:

Models of Reinforcement Learning in the Brain

Abstract:

This talk will illustrate how computational models can be useful in understanding cognitive functions of the brain. It will focus on reinforcement learning models that have provided an elegant mechanistic description for how neural circuits in the basal ganglia can learn about expected reward. The presentation will start with an overview of classical models proposing that dopaminergic activity encodes prediction errors that drive learning. Then it will discuss a recent model of how the basal ganglia also learn about different dimensions of reward (e.g. food and water). The talk will illustrate that formal theory in neuroscience can be used to interpret data and generate predictions for new experiments, analogously as in more mature scientific disciplines.