Research

My research uses advances and methods in neuroscience to probe fundamental problems of the mind. My broader goal is to incorporate these tools into novel approaches to the humanities and social sciences, in fields such as neuroethics, neuroaesthetics, and neuroeconomics. My laboratory focuses on the brain's value systems and how they interact with culture to create moral, political, and economic lives.

Lab

My current laboratory reseach involves the project, Love, Compassion, and Care: Virtue Science and Exemplarity in Real Life and in the Laboratory

 

Brain, Mind, and Society PhD Program

I am Principal Investigator of the NSF IGERT PhD  grant, Brain, Mind, and Society. Phd program, which is jointly part of the Social Science and Computation and Neural Systems PhD programs at Caltech. It provides innovative, interdisciplinary training opportunities to prepare a new generation of scientists with both the analytic foundations and the experimental skills needed to pursue careers at the intersection of neuroscience and the social sciences. More information about the program can be found here.


Teaching:
Moral Philosophy and the Brain (Fall 2014), Happiness and the Good Life (Winter 2015), Right and Wrong (Spring 2015), Human Nature and Society (Winter 2016)

Select Publications

Kishida, K., Yang, D., Quartz, K., Quartz, S.R., Montague, P.R. (2012). Implicit signals in small group settings and their impact on the expression of cognitive capacity and associated brain responses. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, B, 367:704-716.

Quartz, S.R. (2009). Reason, Emotion, and Decision-Making: Risk and Reward Computation with Feeling. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 13(5). 209-215.

Beierholm, U., Quartz, S.R., Shams, L. (2009) Bayesian Priors Are Encoded Independently from Likelihoods in Human Multisensory Perception. Journal of Vision 9.5.

Hsu, M., Anen, C., and Quartz, S.R. (2008). The Right and the Good: Distributive Justice and Neural Encoding of Equity and Efficiency. Science, May 8, 2008.

Preuschoff, K., Bossaerts, P., and Quartz, S.R. (2006). Human Insula Reflects Risk Predictions Errors as Well as Risk. Journal of Neuroscience 28(11).

Kording, P. Beierholm, U., Ma, W.J., Quartz, S.R, Tenenbaum, J., Shams, L. (2007). Causal inference in multisensory perception. Public Library of Science (PLoS One), 2(9).

Preuschoff, K., Bossaerts, P., and Quartz, S.R. (2006). Neural Differentiation of Expected Reward and Risk in Human Subcortical Structures. Neuron. 51:381-90.

Tomlin, D., Kayali, M.A., Anen, C., King-Casas, B., Camerer, C., Quartz, S.R., Montague, P.R. (2006). Agent-specific responses in the cingulate cortex during economic exchanges. Science. 312:1047-50.

King-Casas, B., Tomlin, D., Anen, C., Camerer, C., Quartz, S.R., and Montague, P.R. (2005). Getting to Know You: Reputation and trust in a two-person economic exchange. Science. 308: 78-83.