Iris Donga Vilares

Psychology

N218 Elliott Hall

75 East River Parkway
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Collegiate Affiliation

My research investigates how humans make decisions, and how these differ in people with psychiatric and neurological diseases. To analyze this, I combine tools from cognitive neuroscience with neuroeconomics and computational models. One topic of particular focus is decision-making under uncertainty. I research this both at an individual/perceptual level (how do people combine uncertain prior and current information in a sensorimotor task) and at a social level (trusting others in the face of social uncertainty). Furthermore, I look at how these processes are represented in the brain. Computational models are then used to explain the resulting behaviors, and to offer a principled understanding of decision-making in health and disease.

Educational Background & Specialties

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Educational Background

PhD: Neuroscience, Northwestern University / Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Dec 2013
MSc: Mathematics Applied to the Biological Sciences, Technical University of Lisbon, 2008
BSc/Licenciatura: Biology, University of Lisbon, 2005

Specialties

Neuroeconomics
Decision-making
Cognitive Neuroscience
Functional neuroimaging
Computational Psychiatry

Publications

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Publications

Vilares I*, Wesley M*, Ahn W, Bonnie R, Hoffman M, Jones O, Morse S, Yaffe G, Lohrenz T, and Montague PR (2017). Predicting the knowledge-recklessness distinction in the human brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114(12):3222 -3227
Vilares I and Kording KP (2017). Dopaminergic medication increases reliance on current information in Parkinson’s Disease. Nature Human Behaviour. 1.8: 0129
Hula A, Vilares I, Dayan P and Montague PR (2018). A model of risk and mental state shifts during social interaction. PLoS Computational Biology 14(2): e1005935.
Fernandes HL, Stevenson IH, Vilares I, and Kording KP (2014). The generalization of prior uncertainty during reaching. The Journal of Neuroscience 34(45):11470-11484.
Mahte P, Vilares I, Stibb S, Albert M, Pickering L, Marcianak C, Kording KP, and Toledo S (2013). Wii Fit Balance Board playing improves balance and gait in Parkinson’s disease. Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 5(9):769-777.
Vilares I, Howard JD, Fernandes HL, Gottfried JA, and Kording KP (2012). Differential representations of prior and likelihood uncertainty in the human brain. Current Biology 22(18):1641-1648.
Vilares I and Kording KP (2011). Bayesian models: The structure of the world, uncertainty, behavior, and the brain. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1224:22-39
Vilares I, Dam G and Kording KP (2011). Trust Games: Are money and effort equivalent? PLoS ONE 6(2): e17113.

Courses

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