Talk abstracts > Matthew Apps (University of Birmingham)

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Matthew Apps - University of Birmingham

Thursday, June 1^st

Talk Session 2: How effort and fatigue affect decision-making

17h30 - 18h

A neural, cognitive, computational framework of momentary fatigue and persistence in effortful tasks

From a gym workout, to deciding whether to persevere with a task at work, many activities require us to persist in deciding that rewards are worth physical or cognitive effort. Such effort can come at the cost of fatigue, that may in turn reduce the willingness to exert further effort. However, formal computational frameworks of how fatigue fluctuates and influences subsequent decisions to exert effort or take rests, have been lacking. Here, I present a computational account for the cognitive processes that underlie how fatigue fluctuates from moment-to-moment during effortful behaviours, and how such fluctuations similarly impact the willingness to exert effort. Across a series of studies, I will present work from my lab showing how features of this model covary with activity in fronto-striatal brain systems during effort-based decisions, and how the computational model can account for fatigue arising due to both physical and cognitive effort, as well as illuminate differences between them. Lastly, I will show how this framework may be fruitful for understanding pathological fatigue, by showing how dopamine depletion leads to a computational signature of reduced recovery from fatigue in Parkinson’s Disease.