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 and in press at the Journal of Neuroscience.  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., Li, J.K., Gorgolewski, K.J., Poldrack, R.A. (in press). Reward learning over weeks versus minutes increases the neural representation of value in the human brain. Journal of Neuroscience.

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.