Tuesday, October 14, 2025 10/14/2025

Neural and computational mechanisms of motivation and cognitive control

Award Number: R01MH124849
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 07/10/2024
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 12/31/2025

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Neural and computational mechanisms of motivation and cognitive control - PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Most daily tasks demand cognitive control, but people vary in their motivation to meet the control demands required of those tasks. Motivational impairments are a common and transdiagnostic feature of a wide range of psychiatric and neurological disorders—including major depression, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s—severely compromising the daily functioning and overall wellbeing of individuals with these disorders. Unfortunately, little is known about the neurocomputational mechanisms that drive these impairments. We recently developed a computational model of how people make decisions about control allocation based on an evaluation of the costs and benefits (the Expected Value of Control [EVC] model). Our model points to several potential sources of motivational impairments and their putative neural substrates. These include deficits in learning about incentives, signaling those incentives when expected, and/or properly utilizing those incentives when making decisions about control allocation. The model suggests that dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC) is responsible for integrating incentive information in order to motivate the level of cognitive control that is most worthwhile. Our model further points to two dissociable components of the incentives for control: (1) the expected efficacy of control (the extent to which control is necessary to reach a particular goal) and (2) the expected reward for reaching that goal. Previous research has primarily focused on the latter component. It is therefore largely unknown how efficacy is learned and anticipated; how it is integrated with reward to guide control allocation; and to what extent motivational impairments are caused by deficits in the processing of efficacy. We have developed and validated a set of tasks that tease apart the independent influences of reward and efficacy on effort allocation. We will have adult participants perform these tasks while undergoing EEG or fMRI, to characterize the neurocomputational mechanisms by which expected reward and efficacy are (1) signaled, (2) utilized to determine effort allocation, (3) updated based on feedback, and (4) generalized to novel stimuli. We predict that dACC will integrate reward and efficacy information from separate frontoparietal inputs, to determine the amount and type of control that is most worthwhile. This control allocation will be enacted through dACC’s interactions with goal-specific prefrontal and subcortical regions. We also predict that reward- and efficacy-selective regions of frontostriatal and frontoparietal circuits will interact to guide learning and generalization of task incentives. We will test these predictions with model-based analyses of behavior and neural activity, using our EVC model to generate participant-specific estimates of incentive processing and control allocation across trials. This research will offer critical new insight into the computations and circuits underlying the motivation of cognitive control. It therefore has the potential to inform our understanding of the mechanisms of evaluation and motivation more generally, and to provide a path towards improving diagnosis and treatment for impairments that are both prevalent and transdiagnostic.


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 = $401,250 )
2025	2025	REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, THE	1608 4TH ST STE 201	BERKELEY	CA	94710	ALAMEDA	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	6	12/20/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$341,063
2025	2025	REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, THE	1608 4TH ST STE 201	BERKELEY	CA	94710	ALAMEDA	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	003	6	9/18/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$60,187
2025	2024	REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, THE	1608 4TH ST STE 201	BERKELEY	CA	94710	ALAMEDA	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	5	12/20/2024	CHANGE OF GRANTEE / TRAINING INSTITUTION / AWARDING INSTITUTION	$0
2025	2024	BROWN UNIVERSITY	1 PROSPECT ST	PROVIDENCE	RI	02912	PROVIDENCE	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	002	4	3/3/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
														Subtotal = $401,250

Issue Date FY: 2024 ( Subtotal = $394,307 )
2024	2024	REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, THE	1608 4TH ST STE 201	BERKELEY	CA	94710	ALAMEDA	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	003	5	8/26/2024	CHANGE OF GRANTEE / TRAINING INSTITUTION / AWARDING INSTITUTION	$331,544
2024	2024	BROWN UNIVERSITY	1 PROSPECT ST	PROVIDENCE	RI	02912	PROVIDENCE	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	002	4	8/26/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	-$335,987
2024	2024	BROWN UNIVERSITY	1 PROSPECT ST	PROVIDENCE	RI	02912	PROVIDENCE	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	4	7/5/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$39,875
2024	2024	BROWN UNIVERSITY	1 PROSPECT ST	PROVIDENCE	RI	02912	PROVIDENCE	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	4	12/22/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$358,875
														Subtotal = $394,307

Issue Date FY: 2023 ( Subtotal = $398,750 )
2023	2023	BROWN UNIVERSITY	1 PROSPECT ST	PROVIDENCE	RI	02912	PROVIDENCE	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	3	1/20/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$398,750
														Subtotal = $398,750

Issue Date FY: 2022 ( Subtotal = $398,333 )
2022	2022	BROWN UNIVERSITY	1 PROSPECT ST	PROVIDENCE	RI	02912	PROVIDENCE	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	2	6/21/2022	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$39,834
2022	2022	BROWN UNIVERSITY	1 PROSPECT ST	PROVIDENCE	RI	02912	PROVIDENCE	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	2	12/16/2021	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$358,499
														Subtotal = $398,333

Issue Date FY: 2021 ( Subtotal = $397,084 )
2021	2021	BROWN UNIVERSITY IN PROVIDENCE IN THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS	1 PROSPECT ST	PROVIDENCE	RI	02912	PROVIDENCE	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	1	3/2/2021	NEW	$397,084
														Subtotal = $397,084

Grand Total All Awards = $1,989,724

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Neural and computational mechanisms of motivation and cognitive control

Award Number: R01MH124849

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

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

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 07/10/2024

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 12/31/2025

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