Brief

- From my work on the effect of spacing on reward-based learning with Russ Poldrack funded by the DFG, we have a new preprint - now with fMRI data - on bioRxiv.  Spaced training establishes longer-lasting value associations, while typical "massed" single-session learning is related to working memory capacity.

- We have a paper in the Journal of Neuroscience on how single episodes of reward experience are represented in the brain and how they can affect later decision making: Wimmer & Büchel, 2016.

Research

- My research is focused on the cognitive and neural systems underlying learning and decision making. I am supported by the German research foundation (DFG) to investigate the influence of temporal spacing on the cognitive and neural systems supporting feedback learning.

- Currently, my fellowship is based with Prof. Ray Dolan at the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing. Previously, my fellowship was based with Prof. Russ Poldrack at Stanford University.

- Previously, I was a post-doctoral researcher with Prof. Christian Büchel at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany.                                                        

- My doctoral research was conducted in the Psychology Department of Columbia University with Prof. Daphna Shohamy.

- Prior to my Ph.D., I was the lab coordinator for Brian Knutson's SPAN lab at Stanford.

Recent publications

Wimmer, G.E., Büchel, C. (2016). Reactivation of reward-related patterns from single past episodes supports memory-based decision making. Journal of Neuroscience, 36(10): 2868-2880.

Wimmer, G.E., Braun, E.K., Daw, N.D., Shohamy, D. (2014). Episodic memory encoding interferes with reward learning and decreases striatal prediction errors. Journal of Neuroscience, 34(45): 14901-14912.

Gerraty, R.T.*, Davidow, J.Y.*, Wimmer, G.E., Kahn, I., Shohamy, D. (2014). Transfer of learning relates to intrinsic connectivity between the hippocampus, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and large-scale networks. Journal of Neuroscience, 4(34): 11297-11303.

Wimmer, G.E., Shohamy, D. (2012). Preference by association: How memory mechanisms in the hippocampus bias decisions. Science, 338: 270-273.