Andrew Westbrook

The paper shows that neural timescale flexibility adapts to task demands, is hierarchically organized, and develops through two stages in youth.

This study examines how EEG scale-invariance, a measure of proximity to criticality, relates to cognitive flexibility and effort during task-switching.

The paper quantifies how adolescent brain maturation shifts excitation-inhibition balance and proximity to criticality using EEG data from 169 participants aged 10-33.

This study identifies disruptions in brain criticality and excitation-inhibition balance in Major Depressive Disorder using resting-state EEG data.

The paper develops computational models to analyze E/I ratio and E+I strength in brain disorders, finding distinct patterns in epilepsy, Alzheimer's, autism, and ADHD.

This study shows dopamine enhances both reinforcement learning and working memory, reduces effort costs, and highlights the need to account for its effects on working memory when studying reinforcement learning.

This study compares the subjective effort costs of distractor resistance and flexible updating in working memory tasks, finding that distractor resistance is more effortful.

This study shows mental effort cost learning is retrospective, updating decisions based on prediction errors at effort completion, not during the task.

The paper links striatal dopamine synthesis capacity to smartphone social activity using PET scans and behavioral data from healthy adults.

This study shows methylphenidate increases preference for mental labor over leisure, especially in individuals with higher baseline striatal dopamine.

The paper shows methylphenidate enhances cognitive effort by altering the benefit-to-cost ratio of cognitive work through striatal dopamine signaling.

The paper shows that a valuation network encodes the subjective value of cognitive effort, similar to other cost domains, and links this to motivation and decision-making.