G. Elliott Wimmer
Medical Research Council Fellow
Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry & Ageing Research
Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging
University College London
10-12 Russell Square, London
e.wimmer (at) ucl.ac.uk
CV (pdf - with links to full-text of papers)
Positions and Education
Senior Research Fellow & Principal Investigator, 2021 to present
Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing, University College London
Post-doctoral researcher, 2017-21, UCL
Post-doctoral researcher, 2016-2017, Department of Psychology, Stanford University
Post-doctoral researcher, 2013-2015, Department of Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf
Ph.D., 2012, Psychology, Columbia University
B.A., 2005, Cognitive Science, University of California, Berkeley
News
I am excited to announce that I have been awarded a Career Development Award from the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) to begin my own group at the Max Planck UCL Centre and WCHN. This research focuses on the role of memory & mood in decision-making.
As of September 2021, I am hiring a postdoc for these studies (job posting here!), so please share and get in touch if interested.
2020: With Yunzhe Liu at the Max Planck UCL Centre, we have a recent paper connecting replay (sequenceness) to behavior in humans (Nature Neuroscience, 2020). We find the successful memory decisions are associated with rapid compressed replay of original experiences.
2019: From my work with Christian Büchel, we published a paper on the role of the OFC in learning predictions of distant states in Nature Communication (2019).
2018: From my work with Russ Poldrack funded by the DFG, we published a paper on the effects of temporal spacing on reward learning in the Journal of Neuroscience (2018). We find that "spaced" training establishes longer-lasting value associations, while typical "massed" single-session learning is related to working memory capacity, plus some interesting hippocampal multivariate effects.
Research
The research of my group is focused on the cognitive and neural systems underlying learning and decision making, located at the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing.
At Stanford University with Prof. Russ Poldrack, supported by the German research foundation (DFG), I investigated the influence of temporal spacing on the cognitive and neural systems supporting feedback learning.
Previously, I was a post-doctoral researcher with Prof. Christian Büchel at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany.
Highlighted publications
Wimmer, G.E., Poldrack, R.A. (2021). Reward learning and working memory: effects of massed versus spaced training and post-learning delay period. Memory & Cognition.
Wimmer, G.E., Büchel, C. (2021). Reactivation of single-episode pain patterns in the hippocampus and decision making. Journal of Neuroscience, 41(37): 7894-7908.
Wimmer, G.E., Liu, Y., Vehar, N., Behrens, T.E.J., Dolan, R.J. (2020). Episodic memory retrieval success is associated with rapid replay of episode content. Nature Neuroscience, 23: 1025-1033.
Wimmer, G.E., Büchel, C. (2019). Learning of distant state predictions by the orbitofrontal cortex in humans. Nature Communications, 10:2554.
Braun, E.K., Wimmer, G.E., Shohamy, D. (2018). Retroactive and graded enhancement of memory by reward. Nature Communications, 9:4886.
Wimmer, G.E., Li, J.K., Gorgolewski, K.J., Poldrack, R.A. (2018). Reward learning over weeks versus minutes increases the neural representation of value in the human brain. Journal of Neuroscience, 38(35): 7649-7666.
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.
Shared data and resources
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