Highlighting Faculty Member Jaime Castrellon
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Date published: 04/01/25
What drives people to make certain decisions—and why do motivations vary? My lab studies the cognitive and neural mechanisms of motivation and value-based choice. We are especially interested in how people weigh costs and benefits in decisions that impact themselves and others.
In my lab, we take a multidisciplinary approach that integrates experimental behavioral economics, computational modeling, theories of social perception and bias, pharmacology, neuroimaging (fMRI and PET), and real-world experience sampling. Our goal is to understand both the basic mechanisms that support motivation and decision making, and how these processes play out in daily life.
(1) What are the neural and behavioral mechanisms of motivation and value-based choice?
Motivation isn’t just about what people want—it’s about how they learn what to value, how they weigh tradeoffs, and what drives them to act. Our lab studies how individuals pursue social versus non-social rewards, and how neurotransmitters like dopamine contribute to value-based decisions. We also explore how social preferences—like fairness or trust—are represented in the brain, and how these preferences shift based on context or internal states. These questions are addressed through a combination of pharmacological manipulations, computational modeling, and multimodal neuroimaging.
(2) How do motivation and decision processes operate in the real world?
A major focus of our lab is bridging laboratory findings with real-world experiences. To do this, we use experience sampling methods through mobile surveys and wearable devices to capture how daily social, cultural, and environmental factors interact with motivation and decision-making processes. We also study how adult age differences moderate these effects—asking, for example, how social decision-making strategies or motivational priorities shift across the lifespan. Beyond these measures, we study how people incorporate social biases in decisions made in legal contexts (like juror decisions) to understand ways of increasing fairness in the justice system.
By linking cognitive and neural mechanisms with everyday behavior, we aim to generate insights that are both theoretically meaningful and practically relevant. You can learn more about his lab here: https://www.castrellonlab.psych.ucla.edu/
Dr. Castrellon was born and raised in Southern California and still roots for his alma mater, the University of Southern California, where he obtained his B.A. in Neuroscience and Political Science. He completed his Ph.D. in Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University where he studied the role of dopamine in reward valuation and decision making. He then conducted a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania where he studied how humans learn about and integrate social information in their decisions. In addition to the psychology department, Dr. Castrellon has an affiliation in the Chicano Studies Research Center. Dr. Castrellon is an avid runner and when he’s not on campus, he can be spotted on jogs all around Los Angeles.
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