Cognitive effort is emerging as increasingly important construct in a diverse set of literature ranging from predictors of everyday outcomes (e.g. academic achievement), to psychopathology, to fundamental principles of behavioral control. Effort may be particularly important, for example, for understanding disorders of anergia and amotivation. It may explain why individuals with major depression demonstrate intact performance on low effort tasks, yet perform below average on demanding tasks. Yet, despite rapidly growing interest, very little is understood about cognitive effort. Limited understanding stems from imprecise definitions and impoverished methodological frameworks. We propose to address this gap by using a novel approach, that adapting well established behavioral and neuroeconomic methods to formalize the notion of cognitive effort, in terms of a discounting index (i.e., the degree to which cognitive effort reduces the subjective value of task engagement). This cognitive effort discounting index provides an important leverage point from which to investigate individual differences in cognitive motivation, examine their brain basis, and identify the key mechanisms by which they contribute to decision-making regarding task engagement. The current project explores these issues through an integrated series of studies that involve a powerful within-subjects experimental design, sophisticated analytic methods, and cutting-edge fMRI methodology. Success in this effort will significantly advance our understanding of the basic neural mechanisms that contribute to decisions about cognitive effort, and will have important clinical implications by providing targets for diagnosis and intervention in disorders, such as major depression, for which cognitive motivational impairments play a major role.
) Many individuals fail to pursue desirable goals when these require significant mental effort. This failure of cognitive motivation is especially problematic i a range of mental health disorders (such as schizophrenia, depression, and ADHD). This project will provide critical and detailed information regarding individual variation in cognitive motivatin and its brain basis. Such knowledge has high relevance for public health, by advancing our understanding of why healthy individuals sometimes fail to reach their full cognitive potential, and by providing new targets for the diagnosis and treatment of cognitive motivation impairments in mental health disorders.
| Yee, Debbie M; Braver, Todd S (2018) Interactions of Motivation and Cognitive Control. Curr Opin Behav Sci 19:83-90 |
| Westbrook, Andrew; Braver, Todd S (2016) Dopamine Does Double Duty in Motivating Cognitive Effort. Neuron 89:695-710 |
| Westbrook, Andrew; Braver, Todd S (2015) Cognitive effort: A neuroeconomic approach. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 15:395-415 |
| Yee, Debbie M; Krug, Marie K; Allen, Ariel Z et al. (2015) Humans Integrate Monetary and Liquid Incentives to Motivate Cognitive Task Performance. Front Psychol 6:2037 |
