David Barack

David Barack is a neuroscientist and philosopher. His neuroscientific investigations target the neural circuits of foraging decisions in humans and non-human primates. He is particularly interested in how primates search for information, how information is encoded in the brain independently of reward, and how information guides inferences to learn about states of the world. David’s philosophical work explores the conceptual foundations of cognitive neuroscience, especially the underlying dynamical basis for cognition, and the foraging foundations of reasoning. David received his PhD in philosophy from Duke University, worked as a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, and matriculated to Columbia as a Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience. David is now a research associate at Platt Labs. He is also a 2019 K99/R00 awardee through the NIH BRAIN Initiative.

Project Title

Reasoning as Foraging

Christopher Peacocke
Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University

Daniel Salzman
Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, Columbia University

Michael Woodford
John Bates Clark Professor of Political Economy, Columbia University