Philippe Tobler Ph.D.

Philippe Tobler, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Economics, at the University of Zurich, and Administrative Director of the Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research. His lab investigates the neural mechanisms underlying value-based decision-making and reward learning in social and non-social contexts. Dr. Tobler received his Ph.D. in Anatomy, from the University of Cambridge where he investigated reward processing by single dopamine neurons. His postdoctoral work employed functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans to shed light on how the brain processes economic reward parameters, such as risk, delay and probability. He is currently interested in the neural basis of reward, learning, economic decision making and social behavior. Dr. Tobler is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and has been Associate Professor, Finance Department, University of Tilburg, Netherlands, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Postdoctoral research fellow, Department of Physiology, Development, and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge, and Visiting scientist, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan. Since 2001 he has published 88 scientific articles in prestigious journals, including; Frontiers in Neurology; PLoS Biology; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; and Nature Human Behavior; and Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

What Phillipe knows that matters to you: When a series of actions intended to achieve a reward, say food or shelter, consistently don’t achieve the reward, neural mechanisms stop motivating you to perform those actions in the future. Not feeling motivated to perform specific actions may represent efficiency rather than laziness or oppositional behavior.