We are interested in what drives human thought and action. Our underlying assumption is that as optional inputs ("stimuli" or information) and outputs (behaviors) are abundant, if not infinite, and the attention of mental systems is limited—prioritization is necessary. Given this, and treating the mind as an ensemble of processes that create, modify and enact mental representations, the question of motivation can often be reduced to the question of selection among representations at both the input (perceptual) and output (behavior) levels. Accordingly, our work explores the effects of motivational relevance (i.e. the type and degree of information that is deemed important) on selection at both input (what stimuli are processed or attended) and output (which behavior is selected) levels.

With Tory Higgins, we sketched a framework which is a primitive outline for how such selection can operate. In the papers which outlined (2010) and explicated ROAR (for "relevance of an activated representation" 2011; 2013; 2015), we offered a seemingly minor modification to the currently passive notion of activation of mental representations (a.k.a knowledge activation). Instead of the assumed obligatory/unselective activation of representations that correspond well to (or are applicable to) an observed stimulus (e.g., the concept of a rose, of red, of fragrance etc. when a stimulus that looks like a rose is observed)—we proposed that the activation level of each such well-corresponding representation is (also) modulated by its current motivational relevance. Borrowing from Higgins’ (2011) categorization of motivational concerns, we classified potential sources of motivational relevance of mental representations into three categories: Value—the degree to which something is desired/undesired; Truth—the degree to which something is the case ("exists," "is true," "is real," "is to be expected") and Control—the degree to which something can be affected/may affect. Although ROAR lacks a great deal in mechanistic specification, by licensing motivational modulation of mental activation and by pointing at potential sources of such modulation, it goes a long way in accommodating findings showing modulation of "automatic" (unintentional) effects such as affective and semantic priming. It can also be fruitfully applied to explain some recent demonstrations of "reward" influencing classic measures of attention (e.g., stimuli signifying the attainment desired outcome "engaging attention").

The formulation of motivation as influencing selection among representations underlies another major line of work at my lab—work on the reinforcing effects of having "agency." This line capitalizes on the knowledge gained in the last decade or two about the computational (i.e. algorithmic) and functional (what factors modulate it) properties of the "sense of agency" (the, often implicit, judgment that the mind makes about being "the author" or the cause of something that happens in the external world). Applying this knowledge to the function of selection between candidate motor programs, we found that those credited with a successful sensory prediction are faster than actions that are not so credited (2013; 2015; 2015b; 2016; 2020; 2022). Given that our interpretation of the data is correct, we see this as our group’s most important discovery yet, as it is the first systematic demonstration of a non-value/outcome (i.e. desired outcome) related reinforcement mechanism.

A third line, which Eitam Lab was literally pulled into by the data (and by the theory) focuses on phenomenal (conscious) experience. This topic is notoriously difficult to work on empirically, especially given the lack of guidance by mechanistic theorizing on how conscious experience "works." Our entry point is a proposition based on ROAR (above), namely that selection of input operates on mental representations and hence raises the unintuitive possibility that our phenomenal experience is insensitive to the relevance of information. This hypothesis bears some similarity to notions of "phenomenal overflow" (e.g., Ned Block), but unlike that framework, it places the "bottleneck" on the activation of information orthogonally from whether one is aware ("conscious") of this information or not: that is, it stresses experiencing without knowing—that conscious experience is not information or representational in its cognitive sense. Motivated by these ideas we have shown (with Yaffa Yeshurun and Brad Wyble) that people are unable to report a single, salient stimulus, although they are seemingly phenomenally conscious of it when it is irrelevant.

Development of Volitional Movement

What is the role of reinforcement from sensorimotor predictability?

Lab Members: Tal Roth

Reinforcers Working Together

How does reinforcement from sensorimotor predictability work together with reward?

Lab Members: Eitam Hemed, Shirel Bakbani Elkayam (working on Major Depression)

Neural Mechanisms of Reinforcement from Sensorimotor Predictability

Lab Members: Shirel Bakbani-Elkayam (EEG); Rika Aviv (Electrophysiology; Optogenetics, with Oded Klavir; UH)

Evaluating Motor-Plans

(How) does the mind/brain evaluate the effectiveness of its motor-plans?

[By effectiveness we mean consistently (predictability) doing something that can be (visually) perceived].

We think that the answer is positive and we have been studying the nature of this evaluation for the last few years. Some of our findings are that it occurs both on a sub-person (not consciously accessible) and a person-level (potentially conscious). We don't mean dual systems here! But rather that these different assessments somehow affect different levels of abstraction in the response generating sequence. Specifically, sub-personally, the motor-systems assesses and modulates rather concrete motor-programs (activate this sequence of motor-units) and at the person level expectations, understanding and interpretation figure together to assess the effectiveness and affect rather abstract courses of actions (e.g, lift hand)

Mental Imagery and Consciousness

What is mental imagery good for and (how) is it different than consciousness?

Mental imagery is hard to measure and difficult to manipulate. We have spent the best part of 3 years on trying to do both.

Selective Attention

What is selective attention?

Everyone uses the term and James claimed that everyone knows what it is (btw, it seems like he meant 'attention' in the everyday meaning of 'paying attention'). We would be happy to know more and on the way there we found the bare-bones cousin of inattentional 'blindness' and named it Irrelevance induced blindness. We are continuously exploring how task-relevance affects selection in various mental media and functions (e.g., conscious experience, categorisation, implicit learning and declarative memory).