Research
Our team seeks to understand how motivation works, in both the normal and pathological brain. We define motivation as a set of processes that assign values to potential situations so as to drive behavior. Our research is closely related to the emerging field of neuroeconomics, which is focused on understanding value-based decision-making and on explaining deviations to rationality.
We wish to build a comprehensive account of motivational processes, investigating
not only valuation but also belief attribution (assigning probabilities to potential situations)
not only choice but also effort allocation (translating expected value into energy expenditure)
More specifically, our aims are to better describe :
a) how the brain encodes values and beliefs
b) how values depend on parameters such as reward magnitude, probability, delay and cost
c) how values are affected by social contexts
d) how values are modified through learning
e) how values influence the brain systems (perceptual, cognitive, motor) that underpin behavioral performance
To investigate neural correlates of motivational processes, we combine several approaches:
1) human cognitive neuroscience, which is central as we ultimately wish to understand ourselves, in both healthy states and pathological conditions where motivation is either deficient (apathy) or out of control (impulsivity)
2) primate neurophysiology, which is essential to describe information processing at the single-unit level and to derive causality by observing behavioral consequences of brain manipulations
3) computational modeling, which is mandatory to quantitatively link the different description levels (single-unit recordings, local field potentials, regional hemodynamic response and motor outputs)
