How does the brain combine historical knowledge and online processing in decision making?

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I will investigate how people‘s brains combine different sources of information to decide which action to make. In particular, I will look at how people combine new information with what they know from experience.I will use brain imaging to see which parts of the brain ‘light up‘ when people play a computer game which requires them to combine their past experience with new information to catch falling ‘bombs‘. I will make computer simulations of what goes on in the brain when people play the game, and try to associate activity in the simulations with the activity we see in the brains of real people. I hope to improve out understanding of how people make decisions and select actions. Although the research I am proposing here is not clinically oriented, it will contribute to an understanding of how the healthy brain processes information to make decisions: This is important for understanding many psychiatric problems, in which these processes are distorted. A further benefit to health research will be that through this project and my training I will help improve the technology we have for interpreting brain imaging data, which is used in neurological and psychiatric research.