Over the past decades, effort-based decision-making paradigms have become popular and effective tools to assess the neurocognitive mechanisms that support motivated behavior in humans and animals. These paradigms are built on a common neuroeconomic framework that conceptualizes motivation as the result of a cost-benefit decision-making process wherein organisms weigh potential rewards against the effort necessary to obtain them. However, specific effort-based choice paradigms often differ substantially in key design aspects, including the effort domain (physical vs. cognitive), the specific task used to manipulate effort, the presence or absence of rewards, punishments or other decision costs (e.g., time, probability), temporal component (i.e., probing effort/reward evaluation before or after effort exertion), and whether task demand is communicated explicitly or whether it has to be inferred through experience. This methodological heterogeneity may explain inconsistencies in the literature regarding the neural substrates underlying effort valuation and how these processes may be affected by a broad range of neuropsychiatric conditions, limiting the explanatory value of single-task studies. In this review, we provide a detailed overview of widely used effort-based decision-making paradigms, discuss associated advantages and challenges, and integrate key findings regarding neural correlates and observed changes in clinical populations. Finally, we offer practical guidance for selecting paradigms best suited to specific research questions.

Cognitive impulsivity has traditionally been examined by isolating single factors, such as delay, effort, or reinforcement probability. However, real-world decision-making is inherently complex, with these variables rarely acting independently. While some perspectives suggest that effort and time represent a unified construct-effort merely reflecting the time employed responding-empirical evidence suggests that they are dissociated, supported by different neuromodulation mechanisms involved in effort-based versus time-based decision making. Understanding how these variables interact is essential for elucidating the mechanisms underlying maladaptive choices in psychological disorders. This study investigated the interaction between effort and time in shaping preferences by using SHR and WKY rat strains, models for motivational-related psychopathologies. A delay-discounting task was employed, incorporating fixed-ratio schedules to manipulate effort. Each strain was divided into two groups: one had effort in the delayed option; the other had effort in the immediate option. Results showed that in both strains effort in the delayed option led to steeper discounting rates compared to effort in the immediate option, highlighting the significant role of effort in modulating impulsive behavior. No strain differences were found, which is consistent with the notion that delay and effort operate as separate cost factors influencing decision-making, mediated by specific and partially independent dopaminergic pathways. These findings contribute to a broader understanding of the neural mechanism and behavioral dynamics associated with effort and delay, offering insights into their joint influence on decision-making processes.

The nucleus accumbens plays a pivotal role in goal-directed behaviors, receiving inputs from prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. We investigated local field potential activity in all three areas in awake-behaving male Sprague-Dawley rats performing a high-effort lever pressing task for food reinforcement (fixed-ratio, FR40 schedule). Using a within-subject design, we administered a VMAT-2 inhibitor tetrabenazine (TBZ), a dopamine-depleting agent that suppresses the exertion of effort in instrumental behaviors and induces a low-effort bias on choice tasks. Tetrabenazine substantially reduced lever pressing compared with vehicle in rats responding on the FR40 schedule, and we observed that TBZ significantly decreased theta peak frequency and power (6-12 Hz). Theta frequency and power both decreased with higher local rates of responding, especially in dorsal hippocampus, and this relationship is moderated by TBZ, marking its modulatory effects on neural dynamics during exertion of effort. There is substantial variability between animals in both the TBZ-induced suppression of lever pressing and the relationship between theta power and local press rate. We determined that the behavioral effects of TBZ were correlated with these neurophysiological changes across animals. Taken together, these findings demonstrate how TBZ may affect both theta dynamics and effortful behavior and suggest that the amplitude and frequency of theta band may vary with exertion of effort in motivated behavior.

This study investigates the acute impact of high-intensity activity on perceptual decision-making, using computational modeling to assess changes during and after physical activity. Participants performed a two-alternative forced choice perceptual decision-making task at rest (pre- and post-exercise) and during six of eight 5-min cycling bouts (totaling 47 min) under dual-task condition, while maintaining an average intensity of 86 ± 7% of their maximum heart rate. Drift diffusion modeling was applied to accuracy and reaction time data to estimate changes in evidence accumulation (drift rate), decision threshold (boundary separation), and nondecision processes (t). Results revealed improved post-exercise performance, characterized by shorter nondecision time, potentially reflecting a transient improvement in motor or perceptual efficiency. During ongoing physical activity, results indicate that exercise is associated with a decrease in nondecision time and an increase in the efficiency of evidence accumulation, while response caution remains stable. These findings provide novel insights into how sustained high-intensity exercise modulates perceptual decision-making dynamics under physiological stress.

Loneliness is an unpleasant subjective experience associated with significant psychological and physical health problems. With increasing urbanization and aging populations, loneliness is becoming a global public health concern. Thus, understanding the neural correlates of loneliness is crucial for developing targeted intervention approaches. In the current study, we collected resting-state fMRI data from 238 young adults (ages 17-26; 59 males, 179 females) and used fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF) and functional connectivity (FC) analyses to investigate the neural correlates of loneliness. Results revealed that loneliness was negatively correlated with fALFF in the right posterior precuneus. Functional connectivity analyses showed that loneliness was positively correlated with connectivity between the right posterior precuneus and right superior frontal gyrus, and negatively correlated with connectivity between the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex and a network including the right cerebellum, left fusiform gyrus, and right superior occipital gyrus. These findings reveal neural correlates of loneliness, including distinct patterns of intrinsic activity in the posterior precuneus and specific functional connectivity patterns involving regions associated with social cognition and emotional regulation. The results provide neural evidence for understanding individual differences in loneliness and could potentially inform future research on neurostimulation and cognitive-behavioral interventions targeting these specific brain networks.

The Attentional Control Theory postulates that anxiety impairs processing efficiency (and often performance effectiveness) on tasks involving the shifting function due to deficient recruitment of attentional control resources. Furthermore, recent studies have suggested that the association between self-reported attentional control (as measured by the Attentional Control Scale; ACS) and anxiety may be driven by biased self-perceptions of one's attentional control ability. The present study investigated the relationships among anxiety (measured via the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale-Anxiety subscale), subjective attentional control (measured via the ACS), and affective task-switching performance (measured via a word-based paradigm) in 181 adults from the Max Planck Institute-Leipzig Mind-Brain-Body dataset. At the behavioral level, we found no statistically significant association between anxiety and switch-cost measures after correction for multiple comparisons. However, a pattern emerged suggesting that higher anxiety was linked to faster disengagement from negative-valenced stimuli. This pattern was partially mediated by subjective attentional control. The whole-brain vertex-wise analysis revealed a negative association between ACS scores and cortical thickness in the right rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC)-a region typically associated with emotional regulation. However, no significant associations were found between ACS scores and resting-state functional connectivity, and no significant mediating effect was identified for the right rACC thickness on the link between anxiety and affective task-switching performance. Overall, these findings suggest that anxiety may facilitate strategic avoidance of aversive information under certain conditions, and that ACS scores may primarily reflect biased beliefs about attentional control abilities rather than objective cognitive control abilities.

Though largely ignored in the past, aperiodic (i.e., irregular, non-oscillatory) activity is emerging as an important element of the electroencephalography (EEG) signal. Certain characteristics of broadband aperiodic activity have been shown to reflect dynamic neurophysiological states that are sensitive to cognitive task demands and predictive of individual differences in cognitive capacity. In the current study, we test whether aperiodic neural activity can be used to index cognitive effort during speech comprehension in older listeners. Older adults with varying hearing acuity (N = 48) listened to sentences in quiet and in background noise while EEG was recorded. Consistent with listening effort, aperiodic neural activity was sensitive to increased acoustic challenge such that the aperiodic slope flattened and offset was reduced with increasing noise. Moreover, noise-induced changes in aperiodic activity were greater for older adults with poorer hearing acuity. In an age-comparative analysis using additional data from young normal hearing adults (N = 35), age-related reductions in aperiodic slope and offset were observed, replicating past work, while sensitivity to background noise was observed in both age groups. These findings highlight the importance of considering aperiodic EEG activity in assessing cognitive listening effort specifically, and in challenging cognitive tasks more generally.

Cognitive models of anxiety propose that attention bias towards threat causes and maintains anxiety symptoms. However, the effect of working memory (WM) load on selective attention of threatening faces in individuals with socially anxious symptoms and the electrophysiological correlates are unclear. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 30 socially anxious participants and 32 controls during an adapted emotional flanker task. Overall, socially anxious individuals showed worse accuracy and slower reaction times (RTs) in facial emotion recognition than controls. Furthermore, under high WM load, the N2 amplitudes for targets flanked by angry distractors was significantly larger than that for targets flanked by happy distractors and the late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes for angry targets was significantly larger than that for happy targets in socially anxious participants. No such effects were found for N2 and LPP amplitudes under low WM load. The results suggest the impairment of top-down cognitive control in socially anxious individuals. The increased N2 amplitudes for targets flanked by angry distractors and LPP amplitudes for angry targets under high WM load in socially anxious individuals may be related to enhanced conflict monitoring and perceptual engagement for threatening faces under conditions where cognitive resources are taxed.

Several studies have demonstrated that potent sociocognitive factors, particularly perceived race, strongly influence empathy leading to altered social interactions, especially in clinical settings. This systematic review aimed to clarify how racial bias influences brain responses to others' pain.

Positive cues provide information about target features, facilitating processing of the upcoming input. The role of "negative cues," which signal distractor features, is less clear. Their use seems to incur a certain mental effort, and consequently, their effectiveness could depend on whether the benefit of reducing search effort outweighs the effort required to use them. Crucially, when search effort is predictable, participants can rely on expected effort in deciding whether to use a negative cue. This subjective effort/benefit evaluation may explain the inconsistent effects sometimes observed with negative cues. However, the influence of expected effort has not yet been examined in this context. Varying effort expectation may provide a way to test this prediction. To this end, we manipulated effort expectation by embedding a small number of easy trials within blocks of mainly difficult trials and vice versa. We assumed that expected effort can boost cue utilization, especially when a difficult search was expected. The impact of positive and negative cues was compared to neutral cues under identical expectations. We found that benefits of positive cues increased when search was more effortful. Negative cueing effects, however, showed no reliable benefits, even when higher effort was expected. Interestingly, search performance was better when the expected effort matched actual task difficulty, though this pattern was more robust in difficult compared to easy trials. This asymmetry reveals an interaction between effort expectation and task difficulty. We discuss the neural underpinnings of how these factors might influence visual search.

The neural foundations of the Dark Triad (DT) personality traits-narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy-remain largely unexplored despite their profound impact on social behavior. Previous research has indicated potential structural and functional alterations in the default mode network (DMN) and reward-related regions in individuals exhibiting high levels of DT traits. However, these studies have often been limited by univariate analytical methods and small, unbalanced sample sizes. To address these gaps, we analyzed brain scans from a robust sample of 200 participants (mean age 32.43 years; 105 females) using group Independent Component Analysis (gICA), an unsupervised machine learning approach. This method allowed us to extract blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) low-frequency spectral power (fractional Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuations; fALFF) associated with resting-state macro-networks without relying on predefined regions of interest. Our analysis identified 20 macro-networks, of which two were significantly predictive of DT traits: the Central Executive Network (CEN) and the posterior hub of the Default Mode Network (DMN). Notably, higher DT scores correlated with increased fALFF within the CEN and decreased fALFF within the DMN. The heightened activity in the CEN may reflect enhanced manipulative abilities and strategic planning commonly observed in individuals with high DT traits, which is supported by the association between the CEN and the Machiavellianism subscale. Conversely, reduced functionality in the DMN may correspond to diminished self-reflective and emotional capacities in these individuals. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the neurobiological basis of DT traits and hold implications for future research and interventions.

Identifying neural markers of clinical symptom fluctuations is prerequisite to developing more precise brain-targeted treatments in psychiatry. We have recently shown that working memory (WM) in healthy adults is dependent on the rise and fall interplay between alpha (8-12 Hz)/beta (15-29 Hz) and high-frequency activity (HFA; 55-80 Hz) bursts within frontoparietal regions, and that deviations in these patterns lead to WM performance errors. However, it is not known whether such bursting deviations correlate to clinically relevant WM-related symptoms or clinical status in individuals with WM deficits.

Value-based decision-making provides a theoretical framework to investigate apathy and impulsivity-two notable disturbances in Huntington's disease (HD). Whilst existing work has examined decisions requiring comparison between two options, many everyday choices involve a different class of decision: whether to continue to pursue a current course of action or switch to an alternative. We investigated whether reward and cost sensitivity in a 'stay or leave' foraging task would be associated with HD apathy and/or impulsivity. People with HD (n = 37) and controls (n = 40) performed a foraging task where the costs of leaving were effort (low and high) and time (short and long). Apathy and impulsivity were measured using questionnaires, and their associations with patch-leaving times were examined using linear mixed models. People with HD and controls stayed longer as costs to leave increased, in line with theoretical predictions. There was also a significant positive association between individual sensitivity to effort and delay costs. Apathy in HD was not associated with altered effort or delay cost sensitivity. Impulsivity in HD was associated with increased sensitivity to delay-but not effort-costs. Sensitivity to changing effort and time costs in a foraging context differs as a function of apathy and impulsivity in HD. The effects of these costs on foraging decisions also differ from previous work assessing cost sensitivity in HD using binary choice tasks, underlying the importance of decision context in interpreting associations with clinical syndromes in a value-based decision-making framework.

Difficulty with reversal learning (RL)-appropriately shifting behavior following outcome contingency changes-may represent a shared or distinct mechanism across eating disorder (ED) diagnoses. We tested whether RL-related neural correlates differ among adults without and with EDs (anorexia nervosa, restricting subtype [AN-R], AN binge-eating/purging subtype [AN-BP], and bulimia nervosa [BN]) and whether these correlates correspond to ED-symptom severity and frequency. We hypothesized that individuals with EDs would demonstrate differential neural activation during RL relative to individuals without, that activation would differentiate AN-BP and BN versus AN-R, and that activation would predict ED-severity metrics. Medically stable participants with AN-R (n = 22), AN-BP (n = 20), and BN (n = 29) comprised the ED group (N = 71), contrasted with non-ED controls (N = 27). Participants (91% female; M = 25.9; 80% white, 14.5% Asian) completed clinical interviews and, in a separate session, a probabilistic RL task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. We examined differences in neural activation during RL in the ventral striatum and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) between the ED and non-ED groups and between diagnostic groups, and conducted exploratory whole-brain analyses. Relations between neural activation and ED symptoms were examined. Lower right vlPFC and ventral striatum activation during RL characterized EDs. No between-ED diagnosis differences emerged. Lower right vlPFC activation predicted more frequent binge eating and purging but not global ED psychopathology. Individuals with EDs may experience difficulty recruiting certain RL-related brain regions, which may relate to difficulty changing ED behaviors. Future directions include investigation of how RL-associated neural networks maintain ED symptoms and influence treatment outcomes.

Cognitive control of emotion is important for social-emotional functioning. Yet, we know little about the development of implicit cognitive control of emotion (iCCOE) or its neural underpinnings during the start of adolescence. This study aimed to characterize the neural underpinnings of iCCOE in early adolescence and examine how iCCOE behavior and neural activation are related to sex and pubertal development. We used baseline data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development study (N = 7,897; age 8.9-11.0 years). Participants completed an emotional n-back task during functional MRI. We defined iCCOE as the interaction between cognitive load (2-back versus 0-back) and stimulus type (emotional faces vs. neutral faces or places). Pubertal development was measured by parent-report and hormone levels. Neural activation strongly increased in cognitive control regions during 2-back trials and to places; it decreased in the lateral parietal cortex during emotional versus neutral faces at 2-back. Test-retest reliability was low for iCCOE behavior and neural activation. There were no sex differences in iCCOE behavior or neural activation, and limited effects of pubertal development. Thus, the priority should be to develop a task that reliably captures interindividual differences in iCCOE. This would lead to better understanding of the development of iCCOE during adolescence in health and disease.

Navigating urban environments involves making directional decisions at intersections, which can be guided by different cognitive strategies. This study investigated whether distinct strategies correspond to specific spatiotemporal brain activity patterns, reflecting differences in cognitive processes using source-localized scalp electroencephalography (EEG). Thirty-two participants navigated five strategy-specific virtual mazes and made directional decisions at intersections in each given maze. At the behavioral level, we found that strategies involving higher cognitive memory load were associated with lower accuracy, while those requiring complex visual processing resulted in longer reaction times. At the EEG level, we observed that increased theta activity was sensitive to differences in cognitive demands across strategies and was particularly associated with cue-piloting, memory retrieval, and spatial information updating and integration. Increased alpha activity was linked to visual cue and scene processing, while both increased and decreased beta activity reflected internally referenced memory and predictive processing, respectively. We further found that strategies relying on wisely visible cues showed similar spatiotemporal theta activation patterns, whereas those involving absent or nearby visual cues exhibited distinct patterns. Lastly, we observed that increased theta, alpha, and beta activity were associated with higher cognitive demand both before and after decision making. However, during decision making, increased theta activity was linked to efficient navigation in frontal-limbic-parietal-temporal regions and to greater cognitive demand in occipital regions. These findings indicate that cortical dynamics differ according to the cognitive strategy, depending on the type of visual cues and spatial judgments, thereby supporting a classification framework grounded in cognitive processing demands.

Rewards are essential for adaptive decision-making and well-being. While people can obtain both pro-self rewards (e.g., receiving personal bonuses) and prosocial rewards (e.g., acquiring funds for charity) in daily life, the hedonic value associated with these rewards may demonstrate habituation through repeated exposure. However, the neural mechanisms underlying reward habituation and their relationship with real-world emotional dynamics remain less understood. This study combined fMRI and the experience sampling method (ESM) to investigate neural habituation to pro-self and prosocial rewards, and the association between such habituation and real-world emotional inertia. Sixty-one participants (aged 18-25, 46 females) were scanned while performing a monetary gambling task, and their emotional states were assessed over the following 2 weeks. Analyses indicated differences in neural habituation between pro-self and prosocial rewards in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and right inferior temporal gyrus, although this difference should be interpreted with caution owing to the relatively weak prosocial responses. Moreover, individuals with weaker neural habituation in the left DLPFC to prosocial rewards tended to exhibit lower inertia of negative emotions in real-world contexts. These findings suggest that prosocial rewards may exhibit neural habituation patterns that differ from those of pro-self rewards and that sustained DLPFC activity in response to prosocial rewards may contribute to lower negative emotional inertia, pointing to a potential neurobehavioral pathway linking reward processing to daily emotional well-being.

Social influence, including obedience, compliance, and conformity, strongly shapes human behavior, particularly in moral contexts. While the neurocognitive mechanisms of obedience and compliance have been extensively studied, those underlying moral conformity remain underexplored. We conducted an experiment in which two agents sequentially decided whether to administer painful shocks to a victim in exchange for a shared monetary reward. We examined how the first agent's choice influenced the second agent's behavior and the neurocognitive processes involved. Key variables included personal and shared responsibility ratings, sense of agency, and three electroencephalography components: frontal-midline theta power (FMθ) during the partner's decision-a maker of auditory attention; FMθ during one's own decision-a marker of cognitive conflict; and centroparietal P3-LPP amplitude during shock observation-an index of empathic neural response. Results showed that the second agent's decisions were significantly influenced by first agent's choices, especially toward the antisocial direction. Greater FMθ during the auditory processing of the partner's choice was associated with higher overall conformity. FMθ during decision-making was lower when conforming prosocially compared with antisocially, while larger P3-LPP amplitudes to observed pain were associated with reduced antisocial conformity. Prosocial conformity was associated with greater feelings of personal and shared responsibility, higher subjective empathy, increased sense of agency, and reduced conflict during decision making. These findings show that people exhibit a clear tendency to align with others' moral decisions, and the effects of social influence are shaped by the moral valence of observed behavior. This suggests a distinction between processes of diffusion of responsibility in immoral contexts and shared responsibility in prosocial ones.

As humans, we often repeat previously rewarded actions without thinking, but we also possess the ability to plan ahead and simulate actions based on an internal model of the environment. These two types of control are commonly conceptualized as model-free versus model-based control. While there is a body of research on interindividual differences in using either strategy, we aimed to test whether people can learn to regulate which strategy to use based on environmental demand. We used a two-stage decision-making task where participants tracked the drifting rewards associated with two second-stage states. Each trial started with one of two possible first-stage states, each offering two choices that deterministically led to one of the second-stage states. Successful generalization between first-stage options indicated model-based control, while mere repetition of previously rewarded choices reflected model-free behavior. We manipulated how often participants (n = 140) were exposed to alternations versus repetitions of first-stage states. When these states frequently repeat, there is a reduced need to consult the transition structure, because it pays off to adopt model-free control and simply retake previously rewarded actions. Conversely, when first-stage states frequently alternate, it is more beneficial to adopt model-based control, considering the transition structure and generalizing reward outcomes between them. In line with our hypothesis, we show that participants exposed to more first-stage state alternations were more model-based in a test phase than participants exposed to more first-stage state repetitions. These findings suggest that people learn to arbitrate between different reinforcement-learning strategies consistent with a cost-benefit analysis sensitive to environmental demands.

Rumination involves repetitive dwelling on negative thoughts, emotions, and memories and is a risk factor for depression. Cognitive theories suggest that rumination stems from heightened automatic, emotional stimuli-driven (i.e., "bottom-up") and/or deficits in effortful, goal-directed (i.e., "top-down") processes. It remains unclear whether rumination arises from bottom-up processes impacting top-down inhibitory control or from impaired inhibition alone. We used both experimental and computational approaches to address this. Participants (N = 151) first completed self-report measures of trait rumination, followed by the standard and emotional Stroop tasks, before and after a rumination induction. Brooding, a maladaptive component of rumination, was associated with slower reaction times for both tasks. A rumination induction, expected to heighten bottom-up emotional salience, increased the congruency effect in proportion to brooding severity. To study underlying computational mechanisms, we adapted an existing parallel distributed processing model of the Stroop task to include mechanisms for emotional cue processing and subsequently numerically fit the model parameters to individual participant Stroop data. Brooding was positively associated with bottom-up weights and steeper neural activation curves in the task control layer, representing a greater sensitivity to emotional cues and changes in task demands. Higher brooding also predicted faster temporal integration (i.e., activity decay) of top-down control signals and slower temporal integration (i.e., activity persistence) of emotional cues. We therefore propose that a greater sensitivity to changes in task demands and bottom-up emotional cues, along with a diminished capacity to sustain goal-relevant control signals, underlie inhibitory control deficits in trait rumination.