The complexity of the human brain – 86 billion neurons strong with more than 100 trillion connections – enables abstract thinking, language acquisition, advanced reasoning and problem-solving, and the capacity for creativity and social interaction. Understanding how differences in brain signaling and dynamics produce unique cognition and behavior in individuals has long been a goal […]
WashU researchers are studying how the brain perceives, processes, and remembers everyday events.
Mindfulness-based approaches are mental health practices intended to ground people, help them focus attention, and teach them how to think through overwhelming emotions and problems, but that is just the start. The more people are taught ways to better handle stress, the better protected they may be from the physiological problems that stress produces, including […]
Researchers in The Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences are using cutting-edge techniques to help us weather the challenges of everyday life. Human behaviors and emotions can be as complex as any force of nature. From our biggest life choices to the subtle thoughts we barely notice, our minds are always at work. Inspired by […]
A multi-institutional research project led by Todd Braver, PhD, a professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) award from the U.S. Department of Defense to study attention control and strategies to improve it. The project — “A computational cognitive neuroscience framework […]
Todd Braver, PhD, professor of psychological and brain sciences, and ShiNung Ching, PhD, associate professor of electrical and systems engineering, have received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for more than $400,000 to investigate a new way to improve thinking and focus — work that could one day help restore short-term memory in older […]
Todd Braver, PhD, a professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received a $442,135 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study aging effects on the neural coding of proactive and reactive cognitive control. Originally published on The Source.
Are you able to start a task and stick with it, all the way through, ignoring the temptations of the internet or the sudden realization that you should probably do the laundry? Or maybe you should be doing something else right this moment? The faculty that allows people to make plans or goals, and carry […]
When there’s a difficult task at hand, intuition tells us that the more motivated we are to complete it — the stronger the incentives — the harder we’ll work. And the assumption has been that the relationship is linear — the better the incentives, the harder people will work. Rarely, however, do people have just […]
Todd Braver, professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, received a $432,938 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support a project titled “Healthy Aging and the Cost of Cognitive Effort.” Read more.
Too much physical exertion appears to make the brain tired. That’s the conclusion of a study of triathletes published Thursday in the journal Current Biology. Researchers found that after several weeks of overtraining, athletes became more likely to choose immediate gratification over long-term rewards. At the same time, brain scans showed the athletes had decreased activity in an […]
Catherine Tang, a graduate student working with Todd Braver, professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, received a $39,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health for a project titled “Examining mindfulness training effects and mechanisms on cognitive control.” Read more.
Engineering, ArtSci researchers will use fMRI and twins to better understand cognitive control From the WashU Newsroom… How our brains process information is intimately tied to the kinds of goals we have or the tasks we need to perform. For example, when showed the word “yellow,” our brains process it differently depending on whether we […]
Researchers led by ShiNung Ching at the School of Engineering & Applied Science and Todd Braver in Arts & Sciences are working together to better understand cognitive control thanks to a $610,560 National Science Foundation BRAIN Initiative grant. Read more.