Pendleton R. Montague

About

Read Montague, Ph.D., is a Virginia Tech Carilion Vernon Mountcastle Research Professor and Director of the Center for Human Neuroscience Research at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC. His research focuses on computational neuroscience, specifically the connection between physical mechanisms in neural tissue and the computational functions they embody. His early theoretical work hypothesized that dopaminergic systems encode reward prediction error signals, similar to those used in artificial intelligence, and his lab employs theoretical, computational, and experimental approaches to address mental health and its derangement by disease and injury. Dr. Montague's work includes pioneering methods to measure sub-second fluctuations in dopamine and serotonin levels in the striatum of conscious human subjects. His research aims to decode the neurobiology of decision-making, learning, and valuation, and explores fundamental questions about free will and the origins of human values. His contributions have been supported by prominent institutions such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and several foundations. He has also been involved in the MacArthur Foundation Network on Neuroscience and Law, with a particular interest in mental states.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Biology
• Cognitive psychology
• Chemistry

Selected publications

• Sub-second Dopamine and Serotonin Signaling in Human Striatum during Perceptual Decision-Making

  Neuron · 2020 · 136 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Recent animal research indicates that dopamine and serotonin, neuromodulators traditionally linked to appetitive and aversive processes, are also involved in sensory inference and decisions based on such inference. We tested this hypothesis in humans by monitoring sub-second striatal dopamine and serotonin signaling during a visual motion discrimination task that separates sensory uncertainty from decision difficulty in a factorial design. Caudate nucleus recordings (n = 4) revealed multi-scale…

  DOI

• Dopamine and serotonin in human substantia nigra track social context and value signals during economic exchange

  Nature Human Behaviour · 2024-02-26 · 44 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Dopamine and serotonin are hypothesized to guide social behaviours. In humans, however, we have not yet been able to study neuromodulator dynamics as social interaction unfolds. Here, we obtained subsecond estimates of dopamine and serotonin from human substantia nigra pars reticulata during the ultimatum game. Participants, who were patients with Parkinson's disease undergoing awake brain surgery, had to accept or reject monetary offers of varying fairness from human and computer players. They…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Noradrenaline tracks emotional modulation of attention in human amygdala

  Current Biology · 2023 · 38 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  with the pupil and NA estimates being positively correlated for oddball stimuli in a high-arousal but not a low-arousal state. Our study provides proof of concept that neuromodulator monitoring is now possible using depth electrodes in standard clinical use.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Attachment and borderline personality disorder as the dance unfolds: A quantitative analysis of a novel paradigm

  Journal of Psychiatric Research · 2024-04-17 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  Current research on personality disorders strives to identify key behavioural and cognitive facets of patient functioning, to unravel the underlying root causes and maintenance mechanisms. This process often involves the application of social paradigms - however, these often only include momentary affective depictions rather than unfolding interactions. This constitutes a limitation in our capacity to probe core symptoms, and leaves potential findings uncovered which could help those who are in…

  PublisherDOI

• Epistemic Trust, Mistrust and Credulity Questionnaire (ETMCQ) – Validation of the German version in a representative sample

  medRxiv · 2025-09-05 · 5 citations

  preprintOpen access

  ABSTRACT The construct of epistemic trust has garnered significant attention, both conceptually in relation to societal shifts in trust in communicated knowledge and social learning, and empirically in relation to psychopathology. Recently, the ETMCQ, a self-report tool, was developed to assess individual differences in epistemic stance (ES). This paper reports on the validation of a German version of the ETMCQ. Using a representative sample of 2,519 participants older than 16 years of age, the…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant RC4AG039067

  NIH · $1.0M · 2013

• NIH Grant R01NS045790

  NIH · $1.3M · 2010

• Computational and electrochemical substrates of social decision-making in humans

  NIH · $5.1M · 2020–2026

Frequent coauthors

• Terry Lohrenz

  246 shared

• Peter Fonagy

  University College London

  121 shared

• Tobias Nolte

  University College London

  121 shared

• Kenneth T. Kishida

  88 shared

• Peter Dayan

  Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics

  83 shared

• Xiaosi Gu

  77 shared

• Brooks King‐Casas

  Virginia Tech

  62 shared

• Yi Luo

  New York University Shanghai

  58 shared

Labs

• Montague LabPI

Awards & honors

• William R. and Irene D. Miller Lectureship, Cold Spring Harb…
• Network Member, The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on…
• Walter Gilbert Award, Auburn University, 2011
• Welcome Trust Principal Research Fellowship, 2011-2018
• Kavli Fellow, U.S.-China Frontiers of Science, National Acad…

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