Alexander Soutschek

A causal account of the neural origins of mental fatigue

Successful goal-directed behavior often requires the exertion of effortful cognitive control processes, but it remains unclear why engaging in cognitive control is experienced as effortful and induces fatigue. Here, we tested the hypothesis that sustained activation in the dorsol...

Changing the motivation for mental work with temporal interference stimulation

Successful goal-directed behavior often requires the exertion of effortful control processes. The striatum is thought to play a key role in determining whether a goal is worth the required cognitive effort, but whether and how the striatum causally influences effort-based decisio...

Ventromedial prefrontal cortex attenuates the link between physiological heart rate reactions to unfairness and value computations in normative decision making

Abstract Emotional reactions to norm violations influence how people trade-off selfish interests against social norms, but it remains unknown which brain regions contribute to integrating physiological (e.g., heart rate) responses to norm violations into the decision process. Her...