Grant: Project Grant

We make decisions, large and small, every single day. When we choose food from the grocery store shelves, or mark our X in the ballot box, what is happening in our brains? How do we make the best choices when faced with many options, which may vary in many ways? Understanding which regions of the brain are critical for making decisions, and exactly how they contribute to this complex process, is important for understanding why decisions sometimes go wrong. Why do people with psychiatric or neurological illnesses, such as dementia or schizophrenia, often show poor judgment? Why do even healthy people choose the cake when they are supposed to be dieting, or the cigarette when they mean to quit smoking? This project studies the basic components of human decision-making, focusing on the contributions of specific parts of the frontal lobes, and how these regions interact with the rest of the brain. We will work with people with focal brain injury, testing which regions and circuits are critical for normal decision-making. This work will shed light on the brain mechanisms that allow us to find the best option in a crowded decision landscape and help us understand how emotional and motivational influences colour how we see the world around us. It will yield new ways to understand clinical symptoms like low motivation and poor judgment, opening the door to better tests of these abilities, and better approaches to treat or prevent impairments in these domains.