Sneha Aenugu - Three Minute Thesis - 4/25/2023

hi imagine yourself on a vacation are you the kind of person who likes to plan your entire itinerary ahead of time or are you the kind of person who likes to make it up as you go I'm sure you've been on lots of vacations with people and whichever the kind you are you're definitely annoyed by the other and frustrating though it may be it actually helps

to have people who think differently because in the course of evolution our circumstances change uh it is likely advantageous to have a mixture of strategies that where one strategy is bound to succeed and the species survives and I think our diversity and variance in decision making is what made us Thrive as a species but the mutations that cause these different strategies can also sometimes cause side

effects and manifestations of mental illness such as autism schizophrenia ADHD so in my research I hope to understand how the brain employs different strategies and how it differs in different individuals including those with mental illness and how I do this I do with using do it using games now games as you know are nothing but simulated environments where you can act and strategize to earn rewards

do that I recruit participants to play the game while their brain is being scanned now that helps me record The People's choices in conjunction with their brain activity so now when I see that a person a is making choices that is that are more in line with algorithm a I also have their brain activity and can see which regions are facilitating this process and now this

helps me build a functional map of decision making circuit that is employing algorithm a now why is this useful this kind of knowledge can have far-reaching implications because once we underpin the decision making circuits in the brain we can also see what happens when the decision making circuits goes wrong or say in people with Autism schizophrenia and people with other elements of neurodiversity now this can

help us build targeted therapeutic interventions like drugs that specifically Target a region in the brain and so my research not only helps us understand the origins of our intelligence but it can also potentially help improve lives and thus enable us to embrace and cherish the diversity that has brought us so far down the evolutionary timeline thank you