Thursday, July 3, 2025 7/3/2025

Behavioral and Neural Representations of Subjective Effort Cost

Award Number: R01MH119086
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 08/01/2019
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 02/28/2029

Group Awards By:

View Award Description

Behavioral and Neural Representations of Subjective Effort Cost - PROJECT SUMMARY Fatigue, a feeling of tiredness and exhaustion, occurs throughout life and signiﬁcantly impacts our decisions to engage in effortful daily activities. A wide range of neuropsychiatric and neurological disorders report fatigue as either a symptom or comorbidity and are associated with disruptions in effort-based decision-making. Despite the prevalence of fatigue in health and disease, there is a limited understanding of how fatigue evolves over time and ultimately impacts effort-based decision-making. The goal of this proposal is to understand the mechanisms that subserve the evolution of physical and cognitive fatigue through repeated exertion, and how fatigue inﬂuences decision-making in healthy humans. Furthermore, we aim to understand how these mechanisms are disrupted in individuals with major depressive disorders (MDD), of which fatigue is a cardinal symptom. To this end, we will use a combination of experiments in human participants, computational modeling of behavior, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Aim 1 we will investigate how the evolution of fatigue inﬂuences the dynamics of effort-based decision-making. We will poll participants' momentary subjective fatigue as they perform bouts of fatiguing exertion and make effort-based decisions. We will use computational modeling to characterize participants' fatigue and test how this fatigue inﬂuences decisions to exert. We will use model-based fMRI to examine how the brain integrates information about fatigue to drive choice. In Aim 2, we will investigate how motivational state modulates feelings of fatigue and effort-based decision-making. In this Aim we will pair fatiguing exertions with different levels of monetary incentive to modulate participants' motivational state. This manipulation will allow us to study how motivation inﬂuences feelings of fatigue and decisions to exert and the underlying neural mechanisms. In Aim 3, we will identify how fatigue inﬂuences effort-based decision-making in individuals with MDD. Participants with MDD will undergo fatiguing exertions, rate their feelings of fatigue, and make effort-based choices. We will examine how feelings of fatigue and effort-based choice are related to MDD symptomology. In sum, our proposed studies will have a broad impact on the ﬁeld of decision-making by dissecting the behavioral and neural mechanisms responsible for the inﬂuence of feelings of fatigue on physical and cognitive effort valuation. In the long term, these studies may reveal novel behavioral and neural markers to aid in the study, classiﬁcation, and treatment of fatigue.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2025 ( Subtotal = $641,268 )
2025	2025	HUGO W. MOSER RESEARCH INSTITUTE AT KENNEDY KRIEGER, INC.	707 N BROADWAY	BALTIMORE	MD	21205	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	6	4/22/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$641,268
2025	2022	HUGO W. MOSER RESEARCH INSTITUTE AT KENNEDY KRIEGER, INC.	707 N BROADWAY	BALTIMORE	MD	21205	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	4	2/26/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
														Subtotal = $641,268

Issue Date FY: 2024 ( Subtotal = $721,889 )
2024	2024	HUGO W. MOSER RESEARCH INSTITUTE AT KENNEDY KRIEGER, INC.	707 N BROADWAY	BALTIMORE	MD	21205	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	5	4/30/2024	COMPETING CONTINUATION	$721,889
2024	2022	HUGO W. MOSER RESEARCH INSTITUTE AT KENNEDY KRIEGER, INC.	707 N BROADWAY	BALTIMORE	MD	21205	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	4	4/23/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
														Subtotal = $721,889

Issue Date FY: 2023 ( Subtotal = $0 )
2023	2022	HUGO W. MOSER RESEARCH INSTITUTE AT KENNEDY KRIEGER, INC.	707 N BROADWAY	BALTIMORE	MD	21205	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	4	9/4/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
														Subtotal = $0

Issue Date FY: 2022 ( Subtotal = $404,137 )
2022	2022	HUGO W. MOSER RESEARCH INSTITUTE AT KENNEDY KRIEGER, INC.	707 N BROADWAY	BALTIMORE	MD	21205	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	4	7/12/2022	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$404,137
														Subtotal = $404,137

Issue Date FY: 2021 ( Subtotal = $404,137 )
2021	2021	HUGO W. MOSER RESEARCH INSTITUTE AT KENNEDY KRIEGER, INC.	707 N BROADWAY	BALTIMORE	MD	21205	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	3	8/9/2021	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$404,137
														Subtotal = $404,137

Issue Date FY: 2020 ( Subtotal = $404,137 )
2020	2020	HUGO W. MOSER RESEARCH INSTITUTE AT KENNEDY KRIEGER, INC.	707 N BROADWAY	BALTIMORE	MD	21205	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	2	7/20/2020	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$404,137
														Subtotal = $404,137

Issue Date FY: 2019 ( Subtotal = $404,137 )
2019	2019	HUGO W. MOSER RESEARCH INSTITUTE AT KENNEDY KRIEGER, INC.	707 N BROADWAY	BALTIMORE	MD	21205	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	1	8/1/2019	NEW	$404,137
														Subtotal = $404,137

Grand Total All Awards = $2,979,705

Top

All Categories

About

Search

Reports

Data Submission

Award Information

Behavioral and Neural Representations of Subjective Effort Cost

Award Number: R01MH119086

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 08/01/2019

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 02/28/2029

Federal Websites

Department of Health & Human Services

HHS Operating Divisions

HHS Staff Divisions

Download A Document Viewer