Dr. Vincent McGinty Receives NIMH RF1 Grant to Uncover How the Brain Makes Complex Choices

Dr. Vincent McGinty, Assistant Professor in the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, School of Arts & Sciences at Rutgers–Newark, and a member of the Rutgers Addiction Research Center (RARC) at the Rutgers Brain Health Institute (BHI), has received an RF1 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for his project, “Neural and Computational Mechanisms of Multi-Option Choice in Prefrontal Cortex.”

This research uses a nonhuman primate model to identify how the brain evaluates and compares multiple decision options—a ubiquitous but poorly understood aspect of real-world behavior. By combining cell-level recordings with intracranial microstimulation and computational modeling, the project will reveal where and how value comparisons occur in the decision process, advancing our understanding of complex choice behavior and its disruption in neuropsychiatric disease.

The McGinty Lab studies how the brain represents value, and how these value representations are used to act or decide. At a high level, our goal is to understand human brain function by examining the neural architecture common to all primates, through a combination of behavioral methods, neurophysiology and computational modelling.

Learn more: https://reporter.nih.gov/search/yiuRGmusZ0isLFsndMDisg/project-details/11207809