Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research
 

Directors
Raymond J. Dolan (University College London, London, UK)
Ulman Lindenberger (MPI for Human Development, Berlin, Germany)

Deputy Directors
Quentin Huys (University College London, London, UK)
Arno Villringer (MPI for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany)

Overview

The behavioral neurosciences and related disciplines have seen spectacular scientific advances that make them rich in scientific opportunity. These advances have made it possible to work toward a mechanistic understanding of behavioral development and psychopathology, two empirically overlapping fields of great importance to science and society. In both fields, it is key to take a personalized lifespan approach by identifying neural and behavioral parameters that predict more or less favorable trajectories, with the intent to intervene in time when undesirable outcomes are expected.

Based on this overall objective, the Max Planck Society and University College London (UCL) established the Centre in 2014, with both partners providing an initial five years of funding. The Centre was successfully evaluated and extended in 2018 and 2024 for two additional five-year terms. The Centre has two sites, Russell Square in London and the MPI for Human Development in Berlin-Dahlem (see Table 1). It is led by Ulman Lindenberger (Berlin) and Ray Dolan (UCL), and is dedicated to studying the causes of psychiatric disorders as well as the causes of individual differences in cognitive development across the lifespan, with an emphasis on adulthood and old age. Given that Max Planck Centers are limited to a maximum duration of 15 years, the Centre will come to an end in 2030.

In an era of growing obstacles to internal collaboration, such as Brexit, the Centre has deepened and broadened research collaboration between London and Berlin. The Centre currently consists of 59 members comprising faculty, fellows, and graduate students. The Centre's major theoretical tool are computational and statistical models of differences and changes in brain–behavior relations. Accordingly, much of the empirical work carried out by Centre members has addressed how cognitive functioning can be maintained into old age, and how psychiatric disorders can be better recognized and treated more efficiently.

In the course of the last three years, the following groups in Berlin and London have contributed to Centre activities:

Berlin

• The Formal Methods in Lifespan Psychology projcet, led by Aaron Peikert at the Center for Lifespan Psychology (LIP)
• The Lifespan Neuromodulation of Cognition project project, led by Martin Dahl at LIP
• The Center for Environmental Neuroscience, led by Simone Kühn as director 
• The Lifespan Neural Dynamics Group, led by Douglas Garrett (concluded in 2025)
• The Computational Decision Making and Learning Group, led by Nicolas Schuck (concluded at MPIB in 2023 and continued at University of Hamburg)

London

• The Affective Brain Group, led by Tali Sharot
• The Applied Computational Psychiatry Group, led by Quentin Huys
• The Learning Memory & Decision Lab, led by G. Elliott Wimmer
• The Metacognition and Computational Psychiatry Group, led by Steve Fleming
• The Reward, Decision Making and Psychopathology Group, led by Ray Dolan
• The Social Computational Neuroscience Group, led by Marco K. Wittmann
• The Developmental Computational Psychiatry Group, led by Tobias Hauser (concluded in 2024)
• The Threat Avoidance Group, led by Dominik Bach (concluded in 2023)

The Berlin and London Centre sites share common interests in a large number of topics and methods. Prominent examples are the behavioral and neural bases of explore–exploit decision making, the connections between behavioral and neural uncertainty, and the role of replay in human cognition. Regarding the latter, the two sites have focused on the ability of humans and animals to learn from limited data, which far exceeds the capabilities of even the most advanced currently available artificial agents. A mental strategy that both humans and animals employ to great advantage is the recapitulation of old information, referred to as replay. Replay bridges the gap between time and space and enables complex inferences about the state of the world. Hence, studying neural replay offers critical insight into the ability of humans and animals to make sense of their environment, and alterations in replay may play an important role in psychopathology and normal cognitive aging.

Key References 

The focal point of collaboration and intellectual exchange between locations and disciplines are the biennial Advanced Courses on Computational Psychiatry and Aging Research as well as the Academies of the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) on Computational Psychiatry and Aging Research (COMP2PSYCH), which was launched in the context of the Centre in 2016 (see Table 2). In addition, Centre members regularly meet in the context of the UCL Computational Psychiatry seminar.

A full overview of the Centre's activities can be found on the Centre's website.