Goals play a central role in human cognition. However, computational theories of learning
and decision-making often take goals as given. Here, we review key empirical findings …

Is the role of our sensory systems to represent the physical world as accurately as possible?
If so, are our preferences and emotions, often deemed irrational, decoupled from …

Satisfying a variety of conflicting needs in a changing environment is a fundamental
challenge for any adaptive agent. Here, we show that designing an agent in a modular …

For adaptive real-time behavior in real-world contexts, the brain needs to allow past
information over multiple timescales to influence current processing for making choices that …

Anhedonia is a reduction in enjoyment, motivation, or interest. It is common across mental
health disorders and a harbinger of poor treatment outcomes. The enjoyment aspect, termed …

Difficult decisions typically involve mental effort, which scales with the deployment of
cognitive (eg, mnesic, attentional) resources engaged in processing decision-relevant …

How do I decide which restaurant to eat at? How do I form and update the beliefs about the
world that shape my behavior, from my food preferences to career path? The brain makes …

Schemas are rich and complex knowledge structures about the typical unfolding of events in
a context. For example, a schema of a lovely dinner at a restaurant. Schemas are central in …

Why can't we remember everything that we experience? Previous work in the domain of
object memory has suggested that our ability to resolve interference between relevant and …

It is well known that people will exert effort on a task if sufficiently motivated, but how they
distribute these efforts across different strategies (eg, efficiency vs. caution) remains …