Research

Research Themes within the Cognition and Motivated Behaviour Lab

UPDATE: We are currently conducting multiple studies exploring cognitive deficits in Long COVID. Watch this space for updates in this area

Cognition and Consumption:

How do we know when we’re hungry? How do we decide we have had enough to eat?  These are simple questions, but the answers are surprisingly complex.

Obesity and Cognition:

Researchers and clinicians are increasingly recognising that obesity is more than a simple metabolic imbalance, but a complex syndrome that includes many psychological as well as physiological factors.

Individual Differences in Memory: Causes and Correlations:

What causes individual differences in memory ability? We know some answers to this - for example, memory tends to decline as we get older - but in many cases the answers are less clear. Alongside our targetted work looking at memory in Obesity, the lab also explores other factors that are associated with individual differences in memory, including life stage, physical and mental health factors.

A Functional Approach to Learning and Memory:

Episodic Memory allows us to "replay" events from our past in amazing detail. But why has this ability evolved and what is it useful for? One area of interest for the  lab is how memory interacts with other systems such as learning and motivation to inform and drive adaptive decision-making. This line of reserach intersects with work at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (http://lcfi.ac.uk/) using the Animal AI Olympics (http://animalaiolympics.com/AAI/) to assess cognition in deep reinforcement learning agents.