Prof. Dr. Soyoung Q Park is a neuroscientist and psychologist. She investigates how human decisions emerge in the brain and how these can be changed, with the goal of designing innovative strategies to optimize decisions and behavior. On one hand, she focuses on how our social environment shapes our decisions, on the other hand, how our body and brain interact to form decisions. She tackles diverse kinds of decisions, such as decisions to trust others, what to buy and consume, and investment decisions, just to mention a few. Her research has attracted much media attention, her work has been featured among others by the New York Times, The Guardian, ARTE, and International Business Times. She is currently the Department Head of ‘Decision Neuroscience and Nutrition’ at the German Institute for Human Nutrition and is a professor at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

What drives us to trust someone we just met? Did we eat spaghetti for lunch because we saw our colleague eat spaghetti? What drives a risky decision?

In this inspiring talk, neuroscientist and psychologist Prof. Dr. Soyoung Park presents a series of recent studies from her lab, in which she sheds light on the psychological, neural, and metabolic motives and modulators of human decision-making.