Attentional Control
Our senses (e.g., vision, hearing, etc.) are among the most remarkable gifts of nature, as they grant us the ability to collect a nearly limitless amount of information from our environment. However, with the obvious benefits comes a problem: we are severely limited in how much of the information we can consciously process simultaneously. For a simple example, notice the impossibility of listening to two people speaking at once. As a result of our processing limitations, we must develop and employ strategies to selectively attend to the information that is most relevant to our behavioral goals while ignoring the information that is not. Attention researchers have made great progress in identifying what kinds of strategies can be used; however, little work has been done to predict when and how these strategies are used. The lab has attempted to address this gap in our understanding.
Cognitive Flexibility
The demands of our daily routines dictate that we constantly switch from one task to another. Consider that a quick five-minute session at your computer may entail rapid juggling between emailing your boss, instant messaging a friend, and perhaps even working on a paper. While we are quite apt at fluidly transitioning from one task to another, there are real costs -- in both speed and accuracy – for switching (e.g., sending your boss the less-than-professional email that was intended for a friend). What mechanisms underlie these costs? Can we predict variations in one's degree of flexibility over time? We have been primarily using functional MRI to address these questions.