Deciding What to Eat: A Cognitive Neuroscience Approach

Deciding what to eat involves a complex process of evaluating food-related attributes such as nutritional content, perceived healthiness, and tastiness while considering goals and costs. Akram Bakkour proposes that a flexible memory system allows us to sample many aspects of food that are integrated to guide decisions. He tests this hypothesis primarily using computational models and functional MRI, and will discuss the implications of this approach for understanding maladaptive food choices in eating disorders.

Bakkour is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Memory and Decision Lab. He holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin.

For more information, contact Cindy Koschetz at ckoschet@iit.edu.