The Cognitive Basis for Health-Harming Behaviours and Reinforcement Learning
How can we optimise our behaviour through reinforcement learning? How does the brain allocate its cognitive and motor resources for positive versus negative behaviours? What brain processes form predictions and associations to minimise error and uncertainty and to maximise reward?
In many instances the cognitive and reflective processes engaged with this goal can conflict with underlying automatic and habitual processes. Though we feel in charge of how we think and act, we are prey to many subtle signals from our bodies and our environment and these can influence our decisions and behaviours. The end result may be that our behaviours that can seem irrational and in conflict with our longer-term goals and plans
How, why and in whom may this process go wrong?
Given that major global non-communicable diseases are profoundly influenced by health-harming decisions and behaviours, understanding how body, brain and environmental signals are integrated and how they shape these behaviours will be a crucial part of improving health
The Neurobiology of Mental Illness
How developments in our understanding of associative learning and motivation, can provide a basis for understanding why people with mental illnesses have unusual experiences like hallucinations
The Cognitive Neuroscience of Appetite and Over-Eating
In collaboration with the Metabolic Research Laboratories, what ways are environmental cues integrated with internal homeostatic signals in order to drive and constrain eating
