Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

To navigate the complex changing environment we must flexibly adapt our thoughts to match the demands of the current situation. My trailblazing work on mind-wandering and the default mode network over the last two decades has helped to establish this question at the fore front of contemporary cognitive neuroscience. My Discovery Grant will understand how we flexibly adapt our cognition based on our current context by identifying (i) the different types of cognition that emerge in different situations and (ii) how these are implemented by different neural systems. My research program will systematically examine the different types of thought emerge in different situations and build a foundational account of how these different types of cognition are instantiated by the brain. In a series of four studies we will examine whether different types of thought emerge in situations that are linked by a common underlying processes, determine how these different types of thought are linked to the activity in specific brain regions using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and finally understand how these regions are linked to different patterns of whole brain organisation using electroencephalography (EEG). This research program is made possible because of the ground breaking work conducted by HQP in my lab who use the tools of contemporary cognitive neuroscience to describes the role that different large scale systems play in adaptive cognition, and through their development of novel techniques for describing similarities and differences in patterns of cognition across different situations. By developing models that predict brain activity from task-specific thought patterns, we will better understand how the mind is instantiated in the brain, and will develop an approach for constraining the targets of neuroimaging studies, reducing expense and increasing the efficiency of such research. It also provides a unique opportunity to train HQP in the context of a world leading laboratory that emphasizes team work and provides an opportunity for lab members to consolidate their skill set by working closely with world leaders in both psychology and neuroscience that I have collaborated with over the last ten years. They will gain data analytic skills and conceptual training in brain anatomy and higher order thought, as well as soft skills important for communication and team work. The award of this Discovery grant to support research in our lab will help establish Queen's University as a world leader in theoretical perspectives on how cognition emerges from the brain, and help develop novel methods and questions that ensures that cognitive neuroscience in Canada is competitive over the coming decades.