Kyle and I talk about his work modeling the basal ganglia and its circuitry to control whether we take an action and how we select among alternative actions. We also reflect on his experiences in academia, the larger picture of what it’s like in graduate school and after - at least in a computational neuroscience program - why he left, what he’s doing now, and how it all fits together.

Show notes:

• Kyle’s website.
• Follow him on twitter: @dunovank
• Examples of his work on basal ganglia and decision-making and control:
  • Believer-Skeptic Meets Actor-Critic: Rethinking the Role of Basal Ganglia Pathways during Decision-Making and Reinforcement Learning.
  • Reward-driven changes in striatal pathway competition shape evidence evaluation in decision-making.
  • Errors in Action Timing and Inhibition Facilitate Learning by Tuning Distinct Mechanisms in the Underlying Decision Process.
• Mark Humphries’ article on Medium: Academia is the Alternative Career Path.
• For fun, a bit about the “free will” experiments of Benjamin Libet.