Brain mechanisms of flexible cognitive control

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Everything we think and do depends on our ability to pay attention, but how our brains achieve this is poorly understood. In this programme we use advanced brain imaging techniques to study the human brain in action, asking how our brains flexibly direct our neural resources to pay attention and achieve our goals. We test the proposal that the same neural system that drives our ability to pay attention to only the most important aspects of the world, also enables us to flexibly and rapidly shift our attention moment-to-moment as we move through a task or our goals change. The importance of this system can be clearly seen when it is damaged, e.g., by stroke or tumour, often with lifelong disability and corresponding healthcare burden. We develop and use advanced analytics, multi-modal neuroimaging and brain stimulation, to ask how the important parts of the world around us are encoded in this system, and how neural activity develops and changes as it passes between brain regions. In this way, we aim to address one of the most fundamental and enduring mysteries of cognitive neuroscience: how activity in the brain gives rise to thought and behaviour. Then, we cultivate opportunities to apply this knowledge. For example, we explore whether brain imaging can detect lapses of attention and prevent mistakes before they happen in tasks inspired by rail traffic monitoring, and use neuroimaging to study potentially hidden cognitive abilities in autistic individuals who do not speak.