Postdoc position in Cognitive Neuroscience at Leiden University - Research project "The role of noradrenergic arousal in reward-based learning and decision-making"
In this postdoc project, we will examine the role of the noradrenergic brainstem arousal system in reward-based learning and decision-making.
Recent theoretical and empirical work on reward-based decision-making in volatile environments has suggested that behavioral variability does not only reflect random variability during the choice process (i.e., exploration) but also random variability during the updating (learning) of action values. The goal of the proposed project is to examine the degree to which these two (often adaptive) sources of variability in human decision-making are regulated by the activity of the noradrenergic system.
We will use a recently developed computational (reinforcement-learning) model to decompose human behavior into distinct learning and choice processes.. We will test how a pharmacological manipulation of the noradrenergic system alters random choice and learning variability, pupil-linked arousal, and neural (EEG/fMRI) activity in decision-making areas of the brain. We will also examine the link between inter-individual differences in locus coeruleus integrity (using structural MRI) and sources of behavioral variability.