Our group aims to apply computational neuroscience to clinical neurology.
We try to break cognition down into its elementary computational steps, asking what quantities the healthy brain must be using.
Then we try to understand how these steps map on to brain areas and chemicals, e.g. using brain imaging (fMRI, EEG and MEG)
Finally, we ask whether medications can modify cognition. We are particularly interested in the motivational effects of dopamine and acetylcholine.
Next we study how neurological diseases, such as stroke or dementia, can disrupt cognition. This needs detailed, quantitative characterisation of the clinical problem by studying how patients perform carefully designed tasks.
Publications on Google Scholar (sorted by impact)
Pubmed (sorted by year)
, 2025. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions disrupt learning to reward others.  Brain.
, 2025. Impact of APOE, Klotho, and sex on cognitive decline with aging.  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 122(6):e2416042122
, 2025. Disentangling the component processes in complex planning impairments following ventromedial prefrontal lesions.  J Neurosci.
, 2025. Performance and validation of a digital memory test across the Alzheimer’s disease continuum.  Brain Commun 7(1):fcaf024
, 2025. Multi-level encoding of reward, effort, and choice across the frontal cortex and basal ganglia during cost-benefit decision-making.  Cell Rep 44(2):115209
, 2025. Inferring when to move.  Neurosci Biobehav Rev 169:105984
, 2024. Muscarinic receptors mediate motivation via preparatory neural activity in humans.  Elife 13.
, 2024. Working memory as a representational template for reinforcement learning.  Sci Rep 14(1):27660
, 2024. Safety, tolerability, and efficacy outcomes of the Investigation of Levetiracetam in Alzheimer’s disease (ILiAD) study: a pilot, double-blind placebo-controlled crossover trial.  Epilepsia Open 9(6):2353-2364
, 2024. A computational approach to understanding effort-based decision-making in depression.  bioRxiv.
, 2024. Older adults are relatively more susceptible to impulsive social influence than young adults.  Commun Psychol 2(1):87
, 2024. Increased Sensitivity to Effort and Perception of Effort in People with Schizophrenia.  Schizophr Bull.
, 2024. Motivation in Parkinson’s disease: apathetic before you know it.  Brain 147(10):3266-3267
, 2024. Human ventromedial prefrontal cortex is necessary for prosocial motivation.  Nat Hum Behav 8(7):1403-1416
, 2024. Online cognitive monitoring technology for people with Parkinson’s disease and REM sleep behavioural disorder.  NPJ Digit Med 7(1):118
, 2024. The role of the human hippocampus in decision-making under uncertainty.  Nat Hum Behav 8(7):1366-1382
, 2024. Machine learning approach for ambient-light-corrected parameters and the Pupil Reactivity (PuRe) score in smartphone-based pupillometry.  Front Neurol 15:1363190
, 2024. Goal commitment is supported by vmPFC through selective attention.  Nat Hum Behav 8(7):1351-1365
, 2024. Dopamine encoding of novelty facilitates efficient uncertainty-driven exploration.  PLoS Comput Biol 20(4):e1011516
, 2024. Remote digital cognitive assessment reveals cognitive deficits related to hippocampal atrophy in autoimmune limbic encephalitis: a cross-sectional validation study.  EClinicalMedicine 69:102437
, 2024. The effects of pramipexole on motivational vigour during a saccade task: a placebo-controlled study in healthy adults.  Psychopharmacology (Berl) 241(7):1365-1375
, 2023. Negative symptoms and cognitive impairment are associated with distinct motivational deficits in treatment resistant schizophrenia.  Mol Psychiatry 28(11):4831-4841
, 2023. Effects of cholinesterase inhibition on attention and working memory in Lewy body dementias.  Brain Commun 5(4):fcad207
, 2023. Gambling on an empty stomach: Hunger modulates preferences for learned but not described risks.  Brain Behav 13(5):e2978
, 2023. Mechanisms underlying corruption of working memory in Parkinson’s disease.  J Neuropsychol 17(2):235-250
, 2023. Reward insensitivity is associated with dopaminergic deficit in rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder.  Brain 146(6):2502-2511
, 2022. Dissociable behavioural signatures of co-existing impulsivity and apathy in decision-making.  Sci Rep 12(1):21476
, 2022. Dopamine increases risky choice while D2 blockade shortens decision time.  Exp Brain Res 240(12):3351-3360
, 2022. Neural signature of flexible coding in prefrontal cortex.  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 119(40):e2200400119
, 2022. Neural Reinstatement Tracks Spread of Attention between Object Features in Working Memory.  J Cogn Neurosci 34(9):1681-1701
, 2022. Correction to: Nucleus accumbens D1-receptors regulate and focus transitions to reward-seeking action.  Neuropsychopharmacology 47(9):1734
, 2022. Hyperreactivity to uncertainty is a key feature of subjective cognitive impairment.  Elife 11.
, 2022. Nucleus accumbens D1-receptors regulate and focus transitions to reward-seeking action.  Neuropsychopharmacology 47(9):1721-1731
, 2022. Motivation improves working memory by two processes: Prioritisation and retrieval thresholds.  Cogn Psychol 135:101472
, 2022. Human lesions and animal studies link the claustrum to perception, salience, sleep and pain.  Brain 145(5):1610-1623
, 2022. Multicentre appraisal of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis biofluid biomarkers shows primacy of blood neurofilament light chain.  Brain Commun 4(1):fcac029
, 2022. Model-based learning retrospectively updates model-free values.  Sci Rep 12(1):2358
, 2022. Vividness of visual imagery questionnaire scores and their relationship to visual short-term memory performance.  Cortex 146:186-199
, 2021. Hunger improves reinforcement-driven but not planned action.  Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 21(6):1196-1206
, 2021. An Investigation of Levetiracetam in Alzheimer’s Disease (ILiAD): a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised crossover proof of concept study.  Trials 22(1):508
, 2021. Neural and computational mechanisms of momentary fatigue and persistence in effort-based choice.  Nat Commun 12(1):4593
, 2021. Publisher Correction: The computational cost of active information sampling before decision-making under uncertainty.  Nat Hum Behav 5(7):961-963
, 2021. The computational cost of active information sampling before decision-making under uncertainty.  Nat Hum Behav 5(7):935-946
, 2021. Impact of processing demands at encoding, maintenance and retrieval in visual working memory.  Cognition 214:104758
, 2020. A new toolbox to distinguish the sources of spatial memory error.  J Vis 20(13):6
, 2020. Tremor in Parkinson’s disease inverts the effect of dopamine on reinforcement.  Brain 143(11):3178-3180
, 2020. Dopamine promotes instrumental motivation, but reduces reward-related vigour.  Elife 9.
, 2020. Different patterns of short-term memory deficit in Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and subjective cognitive impairment.  Cortex 132:41-50
, 2020. Reward-Based Improvements in Motor Control Are Driven by Multiple Error-Reducing Mechanisms.  J Neurosci 40(18):3604-3620
, 2019. Modulation of the pupillary response by the content of visual working memory.  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 116(45):22802-22810
, 2019. Dopamine D2 receptor stimulation modulates the balance between ignoring and updating according to baseline working memory ability.  J Psychopharmacol 33(10):1254-1263
, 2019. Hippocampal volume across age: Nomograms derived from over 19,700 people in UK Biobank.  Neuroimage Clin 23:101904
, 2019. Identification of Myocardial Disarray in Patients With Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy and Ventricular Arrhythmias.  J Am Coll Cardiol 73(20):2493-2502
, 2019. Neural mechanisms of attending to items in working memory.  Neurosci Biobehav Rev 101:1-12
, 2019. The psychopathology of NMDAR-antibody encephalitis in adults: a systematic review and phenotypic analysis of individual patient data.  Lancet Psychiatry 6(3):235-246
, 2019. Dopamine guides competition for cognitive control: Common effects of haloperidol on working memory and response conflict.  Cortex 113:156-168
, 2019. Recall cues interfere with retrieval from visuospatial working memory.  Br J Psychol 110(2):288-305
, 2019. Motivation dynamically increases noise resistance by internal feedback during movement.  Neuropsychologia 123:19-29
, 2018. Ignoring versus updating in working memory reveal differential roles of attention and feature binding.  Cortex 107:50-63
, 2017. Short-term memory for spatial, sequential and duration information.  Curr Opin Behav Sci 17:20-26
, 2017. Magnetic Oculomotor Prosthetics for Acquired Nystagmus.  Ophthalmology 124(10):1556-1564
, 2017. Cortical areas needed for choosing actions based on desires.  Brain 140(6):1539-1542
, 2017. Distinct Motivational Effects of Contingent and Noncontingent Rewards.  Psychol Sci 28(7):1016-1026
, 2017. Dopamine Alters the Fidelity of Working Memory Representations according to Attentional Demands.  J Cogn Neurosci 29(4):728-738
, 2016. Working Memory for Sequences of Temporal Durations Reveals a Volatile Single-Item Store.  Front Psychol 7:1655
, 2016. Human ventromedial prefrontal lesions alter incentivisation by reward.  Cortex 76:104-20
, 2015. Reduced pupillary reward sensitivity in Parkinson’s disease.  NPJ Parkinsons Dis 1:15026
, 2015. Reward Pays the Cost of Noise Reduction in Motor and Cognitive Control.  Curr Biol 25(13):1707-16
, 2015. Gene therapy for GM1 gangliosidosis: challenges of translational medicine.  Ann Transl Med 3(Suppl 1):S28
, 2013. Attention as foraging for information and value.  Front Hum Neurosci 7:711
, 2007. Does reward modulate actions or bias attention?  J Neurosci 27(41):10919-21
Publication list retrieved from NCBI using ImpactPubs
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