Modern cognitive neuroscience has advanced our understanding of fundamental learning and decision making mechanisms. However, the way these different mechanisms impact real-life behavior depends on how they interact with one another and with other aspects of our mental life and environmental circumstances. In this talk, Dr. Eldar will present his recent work that reveals one such dynamical process, involving a two-way interaction between reward learning and mood: unexpected rewards affect mood, and mood in turn affects perception of subsequent rewards.

After completing his medical training at Tel Aviv University, Israel, Dr. Eldar moved to the US to pursue post-doctoral training in neuroscience at Princeton. Since 2014, he has held a post-doctoral appointment at University College London, working in the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging and the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research. He uses a range of neuroimaging techniques, including fMRI, MEG, EEG, and pupillometry, in combination with advanced multivariate and model-based analyses.