CHBH Seminar Series: Dr Toby Wise

These seminars are free to attend and are open to all, both within and outside the University. Please register your interest to attend using the link above.

We are delighted to announce that the Centre for Human Brain Health (CHBH) will welcome Dr Toby Wise, Research Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, to present an online CHBH Seminar (via Zoom, with potential for a small physical audience), taking place on Thursday 31st March, 13:00-14:00 BST.

To arrange a 1:1 meeting or would with Dr Wise, please contact us.

If you wish to attend, you can register your interest using the link above.

The role of cognitive maps in flexible avoidance

Flexible, adaptive avoidance of danger is critical for survival. However, while a rich literature has grown focusing on the role of simple stimulus-outcome learning in avoidance, the question of how we make more complex avoidance decisions has received relatively little attention. This question gains additional importance given the key role of avoidance in many common mental health problems. In this talk, I will present results from studies demonstrating how humans use an internal model, or cognitive map, of the world to enable avoidance in contexts where simple stimulus-response learning fails. I will cover the neural mechanisms supporting these avoidance processes, highlighting the role of memory reactivation and sequential replay, and outline how we can use computational models to reveal the computational processes that enable complex avoidance behaviours in social environments. I will also discuss the relevance of these processes to mental health problems such as anxiety and depression.

Speaker Biography

Dr Toby Wise completed his PhD in psychiatric neuroimaging at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, before completing a Wellcome Trust funded postdoctoral fellowship at University College London and the California Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the computational and neural mechanisms supporting aversive learning and avoidance, and seeks to understand the role these processes play in the pathogenesis of mental health problems such as anxiety and depression.

These seminars are free to attend and are open to all, both within and outside the University. Please register your interest to attend using the link above.