FSU Program in Neuroscience

Interest: My research uses electroencephalogram (EEG) to study the P300 event-related potential (ERP). The P300 is shown to be altered by the amount of effort a participant expends, but the processes underlying neural variability in the P300 to effort completion is unknown. There are candidate processes including task relevance/motivational significance or stimulus probability. The first objective of my work is to create a novel task to explain effort effects on the P300 and relate it to behavioral indices of effort. Furthermore, the P300 is typically reduced in depression and has been shown to be reduced in depression after high effort expenditure. The second objective of my work is to clarify why the P300 is reduced in depression as a function of effort and how this may relate to continuous variability in depression-related constructs, like apathy and anhedonia.