John P. O'Doherty

Research Interests

My main interest is to develop an understanding of the brain systems involved in representing stimulus reward value, predicting future reward, and in the flexible control of behaviour to obtain reward. This is achieved through a combination of functional neuroimaging and human neuropsychological techniques. Recently, I have been involved in the development of a new approach involving the application of computational models to functional neuroimaging data. This enables a much more powerful form of inference than is traditionally made in functional imaging studies, identifying regions with a response profile consistent with a specific computational process rather than merely reporting the activation of a brain region in that task. Other interests include the functional neuroanatomy of human emotions, neural structures involved in social cognition, and the functional anatomy of the gustatory system.

For more information please go to the lab webpages.