As we experience the world, our brains encode statistical regularities among events and their outcomes as probabilistic “beliefs.” We rely on these beliefs to organize new information, optimize behavior, and navigate an uncertain world. When signals weaken and uncertainty grows, we come to rely on our beliefs with greater and greater weight. Our lab seeks to understand how socioecological environments influence belief formation and how these beliefs are then integrated with sensory information to influence behavior, subjective experience, and overall health. We use machine learning, neuroimaging (especially fMRI), psychophysiology (SCR, heart rate, pupil dilation, etc), behavioral measures, naturalistic datasets, and large online studies to answer these questions.

The Socioecological Cognitive Neuroscience Lab (NeuroSoc) is directed by Assistant Professor Marianne Reddan in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and PRIME Center for Health Equity at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, NY.

Research in our lab is currently made possible by our NIH K12-31239I CTSA Grant