Joshua I Gold
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Neuroscience
Many decisions require weighing uncertain evidence over time, and the world keeps changing while we deliberate. How does the brain decide when it has thought enough and should commit, and how does it update its expectations as new information arrives?
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
Mathematics & Statistics
- Topics
decision-making
computational neuroscience
accumulate-to-bound models
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Develop and test a mathematical theory of adaptive decision bounds that update during deliberation, using behavioral experiments in humans and combined behavioral and neural studies in monkeys making decisions under changing conditions.
- Measure how single neurons in the locus coeruleus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex relate to how monkeys combine learned expectations with new sensory evidence in a flexible eye-movement decision task.
- Test whether precisely timed activity in the LC-to-dlPFC pathway causally shapes flexible decisions, using electrical microstimulation and chemogenetics (drug-controlled engineered receptors) in monkeys.
- Build computational models linking norepinephrine-driven changes in neuronal gain within the LC-dlPFC circuit to the principles that let brains combine expectations with evidence.
- Determine how LC and anterior cingulate cortex activity, recorded at the same time in monkeys, relates to using reward and error feedback across trials to decide when to switch choices.
- Test whether LC input to the anterior cingulate cortex causally shapes coordinated activity in ACC neuron populations and feedback-driven decisions, using temporally precise, pathway-specific manipulations.
More about the research
These projects combine mathematical theory, human behavior, and recordings from neurons in monkeys. Two of them focus on the locus coeruleus (LC), a small brainstem region that is the main source of norepinephrine (NE), a chemical messenger that adjusts how other brain areas process information.
Why it matters
This basic research on the healthy primate brain could eventually inform new ways to diagnose and treat disorders involving faulty decision-making and feedback processing. The grants name schizophrenia and depression, conditions with cognitive deficits linked to the locus coeruleus-prefrontal circuit. The theory of flexible decision rules may also inform how decisions are modeled in machines, and the shared datasets and tools may support other decision researchers.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Locus coeruelus-prefrontal interactions for flexible decision-making
NIH · Sep 2022 – Aug 2027
LC-ACC interactions supporting adaptive, feedback-driven decisions
NIH · Aug 2022 – May 2027
Collaborative Research: CRCNS Research Proposal: Adaptive Decision Rules in Dynamic Environments
NSF · Oct 2022 – Sep 2026
Closest labs
Peter Rudebeck
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Neuroscience
Determine how bottom-up influences on learning change single-neuron activity and communication between the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and basolateral amygdala, by recording neurons in macaques performing a probabilistic stimulus-reward task.
Scott Wilke
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Neuroscience
Record how anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) neurons and ACC-to-nucleus accumbens projection neurons represent effort-related costs and benefits during choices, using miniature head-mounted microscopes in freely behaving animals.
John H Freeman
University of Iowa, IA·Neuroscience
Record spikes and local field potentials with multiple tetrodes in the anterior cingulate cortex, dorsal hippocampus, and cerebellum of rats during trace conditioning, to test whether these regions interact in both directions throughout learning.
The school
University of Pennsylvania: 90 labs on PI Pages, $2.2B a year on research, 750 research doctorates a year.
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