Assistant Professor - Department of Neuroscience Assistant Professor - Menninger Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences Ph.D., Harvard University, 2005 One Baylor Plaza Baylor College of Medicine Houston TX, 77030 Telephone: 713-798-4036 - Fax: 713-798-3946 Email: bkc@cpu.bcm.edu Website: bkcasas.cpu.bcm.edu

Dr. King-Casas studies human decision-making within individual and group contexts, both among healthy social agents and those with neuropsychiatric disorders. In particular, his work focuses on neural substrates underlying cooperative and non-cooperative social exchange. This includes processes by which humans develop models of social partners and exploit these models to achieve shared or individual goals. Much of this research has been carried out on healthy individuals, and is now being extended to investigate neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by difficulties establishing and maintaining healthy relationships. These studies make use of an important new type of functional brain imaging known as hyper-scanning. Hyperscanning uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the blood oxygen dependent level response (BOLD) in the brains of multiple interacting individuals. These experiments are carried out with the use of five 3T MRI scanners, allowing studies not only of interacting human partners but also of larger groups. In collaboration with members of the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Dr. King-Casas is combining the tools of behavioral economics with an ability to simultaneously image neural activity of multiple brains to understand normal and disordered social behavior.

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King-Casas, B, Tomlin, D, Anen, C, Camerer, CF, Quartz, SR, Montague, PR (2005). Getting to know you: Reputation and trust in a two-person economic exchange. Science 308:78-83. Commentary: Miller, G (2005) Economic game shows how the brain builds trust. Science 308:36

Montague, PR, King-Casas, B, Cohen, JD (2006). Imaging valuation models in human choice. Annual Review of Neuroscience 29:417-48.

Tomlin, D, Kayali, A, King-Casas, B, Anen, C, Camerer, CF, Quartz, SR, Montague, PR. (2006). Agent specific responses along cingulate cortex during economic exchanges. Science 312:1047-50.

Li, J, McClure, SM, King-Casas, B, Montague, PR (2006). Policy adjustment in a dynamic economic game. PLoS ONE 1(1):e103.

Montague PR, King-Casas B. (2007). Efficient statistics, common currencies and the problem of reward-harvesting. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11:514-9.

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2006-2008 Individual Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award

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Miller G (2005) Neuroscience: Economic game shows how the brain builds trust. Science 308:36 In each of 10 rounds, one player, the designated “investor,” received $20. The investor then had the option of sending some, all, or none of the $20 to the other player, the “trustee.” According to the rules of the game, which were known to both sides, any money the trustee received tripled. The trustee then had the option of returning a portion of the new sum to the investor. The players’ only knowledge of each other came from numbers flashed on a monitor that indicated the amount of money changing hands in each round, as well as each player’s total for the game. The extent to which a player trusted another with his or her money depended on the recent history of the exchange. If an investor increased the contribution to a trustee immediately following a round in which the trustee had reduced payback, the trustee generally rewarded this benevolent reciprocity with a greater return in the next round. But if an investor demonstrated malevolent reciprocity by repaying generosity with stinginess, the trustee usually returned less the next time around. Examining the trustees’ brain scans, the researchers found that activity in the caudate nucleus was greatest when the investor showed benevolent reciprocity and most subdued when the investor showed malevolent reciprocity. Moreover, caudate activity rose and fell with changes in the amount of money trustees returned to their investors on the subsequent round.

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