Cognition and Neurocomputations of motivation and planning

Being able to make adaptive decisions and follow through is crucial for animals and humans alike. While some simplifications of real life environments are necessary for laboratory settings, past studies have often removed essential complexity. Specifically, a common reductionist approach toward decision making focuses exclusively on a neuro-economic framing. However, this neglects that in the real world, behaviour is often a sequence of choices, requiring planning and sustained motivation to reach our goals. Only by examining cognition and behaviour embedded in these sequences can we gain a full understanding of prefrontal cortex function in general and its cognitive, computational and neural role in sequential behaviours in particular. To answer this challenge, over the last couple of years, I have been at the forefront of developing a new neuro-ethological approach enabled by advances in computational modeling, experimental designs, brain recording annd stimulation techniques. In the proposal, I have identified key cognitive processes linked to challenges the prefrontal cortex has evolved to solve. For prefrontal cortex, this means sequential and selfdetermined behaviours. To make the complexity tractable, I take inspiration from multiple disciplines including ecology, biology, psychology and neuroscience. This way, I can identify the essential elements for achieving adaptive complex behaviour as a response to real-life challenges and build unifying computational models around those processes.