Prof. Isabelle Brocas
University of Southern California
Date/Time: Tuesday, 17 June 2025, 14:00 pm
Place: SC106 Aysel Sabuncu Brain Research Center Seminar Room
This talk explores a neuroeconomic framework for modeling behavior by attributing goals to interacting brain systems. We challenge the classical assumption of fully rational agents and instead propose a biologically grounded approach where decision-making emerges from system-level optimization under resource constraints. Using formal models and empirical data, we demonstrate how value-based decisions, memory management, and information accumulation can be interpreted as rational responses to environmental complexity and attentional costs. We show how this framework produces testable predictions, accounts for behavioral variability, and allows for the estimation of latent cognitive traits from observed choices and neuroimaging data.
Applications include self-control, memory precision, reaction time variability, and their associations with sleep, SES, and brain activity in the ABCD study.
Bio:
Isabelle Brocas is a Professor at the University of Southern California and co-director of both the Los Angeles Behavioral Economics Laboratory (LABEL) and the Theoretical Research in Neuroeconomic Decision-making (TREND) Institute. Her research bridges neuroscience and economics to revisit standard models of decision-making. She focuses on modeling how interacting brain systems give rise to behavior, using a combination of theoretical frameworks, experimental methods, and neuroimaging data to uncover the causal mechanisms through which cognitive and attentional constraints shape individual choices.