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Inaugural Lecture of Professor Matthew Apps

Join Professor Matthew Apps for his Inaugural Lecture

This is a hybrid event: you can register for virtual access via Zoom . 

Can I be bothered? Uncovering computations in the brain that (de) motivate us. 

Being motivated to exert effort is essential for a successful life. From training for a marathon, to completing an essay before a deadline, meeting life goals requires us to repeatedly choose to undertake effortful acts. But sometimes, even though we really want to complete our goals, we just don’t work hard enough. Why? In this lecture I will present the algorithms and brain systems that govern how we make decisions about whether to exert effort, or not. I demonstrate how these systems process effort as a cost to avoid and highlight how computations in the brain can go awry, leading to reduced motivation in healthy people. I also link these mechanisms to more severe impairments, such as apathy and fatigue, that are some of the most common syndromes in psychiatric and neurological disorders. 

Matthew Apps is Professor of Cognitive Computational Neuroscience and head of the Motivation and Social Neuroscience lab in the Centre for Human Brain Health (CHBH) and School of Psychology. He completed his PhD in cognitive neuroscience in 2012 at Royal Holloway, University of London under the supervision of Prof. Narender Ramnani. In 2013, he moved to the University of Oxford, before becoming a BBSRC Future Leader Fellow in 2015, and a BBSRC David Phillips Fellow in 2018. In 2020, he moved his lab to the CHBH and School of Psychology at the 黑料吃瓜网. Prof. Apps has received multiple awards for his research including the 2016 European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Young Scientist Prize, the 2018 Early Career Award from the Society for Social Neuroscience, and the 2020 British Association for Cognitive Neuroscience Early Career Award. His work is currently funded by over £3m of grants including a European Research Council Consolidator grant, a Wellcome Trust Discovery award, a Jacobs Foundation Fellowship, and awards from the BBSRC.