Motivating Wise Choices with an Aging Brain

USC Schaeffer Behavioral Science and Policy Initiative and the Bosco Tjan Colloquium Series in Psychology, we will be co-hosting Greg Samanez-Larkin of Duke University on Wednesday, September 25th from 12:00-1:00 pm! Lunch will be provided. Zoom option available. 

Decline in the dopamine system over adulthood is one of the most well-documented losses in the neuroscience of aging. According to brain science, older adults should be unmotivated and make worse choices as they get older. According to behavioral science, the opposite is often true. After spending the last 20 years trying to figure out how any of this possibly makes sense, I’ll share some progress our lab has made using PET imaging (and to a lesser extent fMRI) to understand motivation in the aging brain. In recent years our lab has shifted away from neuroimaging to begin testing behavioral interventions (e.g., in national health communication campaigns and classroom interventions) that, in part, leverage what we’ve learned from a decade or so of research on the psychology and neuroeconomics of aging.