Read Montague is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral medicine in the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. He also directs the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory and Computational Psychiatry Unit at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute.
Montague’s work centers broadly on human social cognition, decision-making, and willful choice with a goal of understanding the detailed underlying neurobiology of these functions in health and disease. He particularly focuses on computational neuroscience – the connection between physical mechanisms present in real neural tissue and the computational functions that these mechanisms embody.
His laboratory uses theoretical, computational, and experimental approaches to these issues. In particular, the group now employs novel approaches to functional neuroimaging, new biomarkers for mental disease, spectroscopy, real-time voltammetry, and computational simulations. Montague also directs the Roanoke Brain Study, a project aimed at understanding decision-making through the lifespan and its relationship to brain development, function, and disease.
Work in Montague's laboratory is supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, The Kane Family Foundation, Autism Speaks, The MacArthur Foundation, The Dana Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust.