This special seminar is hosted by the Oxford Martin Programme on Resource Stewardship and the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

Speaker: Professor Philippe Tobler, Assistant Professor, Neuroeconomics and Social Neuroscience, Department of Economics, University of Zurich

Abstract: In order to form social preferences, one needs to keep track of who gets how much in social contexts. Learning mechanisms that are used for individual learning could in principle also be used for learning in social contexts. In this talk I present two of these mechanisms in the domain of reinforcement learning and ask whether they are implemented similarly or differently in the brain during learning in individual versus social contexts. The data suggest a dissociation, with more striatal and ventral prefrontal regions underpinning learning in individual contexts and more dorsal and anterior prefrontal regions underpinning learning in social contexts.

This event is open to the public, no booking required