Paul Glimcher

Paul W. Glimcher (born November 3, 1961) is an American neuroeconomist, neuroscientist, psychologist, and economist. He is the Julius Silver Professor of Neural Science at New York University and has held leadership roles in NYU's neuroscience programs, including Director of the Neuroscience Institute at NYU Langone Health and Chair of the Department of Neuroscience and Physiology. His research has focused on neural mechanisms of decision-making and the development of neuroeconomics. He also helped launch the HUMAN Project, a longitudinal research initiative, and co-founded Datacubed Health, a software company supporting behavioral and clinical research.

Early life and education Paul W. Glimcher was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Arne and Mildred Glimcher. His father, Arne Glimcher, founded New York City's Pace Gallery. He attended the Dalton School in Manhattan, earned an A.B. in neuroscience from Princeton University in 1983, and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 under psychologist C. Randy Gallistel. His postdoctoral work on oculomotor physiology examined how circuits controlling saccades may also participate in movement planning.

Career and role in founding neuroeconomics Glimcher joined NYU's Center for Neural Science in 1994. His book Decisions, Uncertainty and the Brain (MIT Press, 2003) helped popularize the term "neuroeconomics" and received a PROSE Award.

He co-edited the textbook Neuroeconomics: Decision Making and the Brain (Elsevier, 2008; 2nd ed. 2013) with Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, and Russell Poldrack; the first edition received a 2009 PROSE Award for Excellence in the Economic and Social Sciences. He later published Foundations of Neuroeconomic Analysis (Oxford, 2011).

The HUMAN Project In collaboration with the Kavli Foundation's Miyoung Chun, Glimcher helped develop the Kavli HUMAN Project, a large-scale longitudinal study inspired by big‑data approaches, modeled on efforts such as the Framingham Heart Study.

Datacubed Health LLC Glimcher co-founded Human Project Inc. (now Datacubed Health), commercializing software to support behavioral/clinical research and participant engagement; he has served as chief scientific officer. - Quantitative tests of dopamine reward prediction error signals in midbrain neurons. - Identification of subjective value signals in human medial prefrontal cortex during intertemporal choice. - Axiomatic approaches to measuring beliefs and rewards in neuroeconomic data. - Context-dependent "normalization" as a general neural mechanism for value coding and choice.

His work has also discussed applications to valuation of public goods using fMRI measures of subjective value.

Honors and other work Glimcher is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has received foundation support from McKnight, Whitehall, Klingenstein, and McDonnell Foundations. He has served on advisory and study committees for the U.S. National Academies and other national bodies. His textbooks and edited volumes have received PROSE Awards.

Books