About
Tali Sharot is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at The Max Planck Centre for Computational Psychiatry and the Department of Experimental Psychology at UCL and is an affiliated professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. She heads the Affective Brain Lab. She holds a PhD in cognitive neuroscience and a BA in economics and psychology. She is the recipient of a Wellcome Discovery Award, a Wellcome Trust SRF, and twice the recipient of the British Academy Book Award.
Research
How do people arrive at their beliefs and make decisions? We are constantly flooded with information that can shape our beliefs about the world. The brain must sift through the available evidence and integrate information to form beliefs. Our lab seeks to understand this process in psychological, computational and biological terms. The work sits at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, computer science and economics. This interdisciplinary approach provides us with a large range of scientific methods to answer our research questions, including behavioral experiments, computational modeling, neuroimaging, pharmacological manipulations, and big data analysis.
A recent line of work in the lab focuses on investigating how human-technology interactions alter and reflect human decision-making, mood and beliefs. As part of this research program we are working on using digital footprints for mental health assessment and diagnosis. In yet another recent line of research we are investigating what makes thinking rewarding.
Publications
Glickman, M. & Sharot, T. (2024) How human-AI feedback loops alter human perceptual, emotional and social judgements. Nature Human Behaviour
Kelly, C.A., & Sharot, T. (2024) Web-Browsing Patterns Reflect and Shape Mood and Mental Health. Nature Human Behaviour
Molinaro G., Cogliati Dezza I., Bühler S., Moutsiana C., & Sharot T. (2023). Multifaceted information-seeking motives in children. Nature Communications, 14, 5505.
Blain, B., Pinhorn I., & Sharot, T. (2023). Sensitivity to Intrinsic rewards is domain general and related to mental health. Nature Mental Health, 1, 679–691.