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Center Overview

Our center brings together leading researchers in the field known for their testable theories of executive function at each of three levels of analysis - the computational, psychological, and neurobiological.

Executive Function

Executive Function is a broad term, encompassing many mental abilities related to goal-directed behavior, such as:
  • Guide, inhibit, and monitor behavior.
  • Make decisions and evaluate risks.
  • Deal with novel situations.
  • Prioritize and switch among tasks.
Currently there is no clear consensus as to which mental processes and which neural structures are critical for executive function. Our center is designed to test different perspectives to create an integrated understanding of executive function and the brain systems that support it. Understanding executive function has broad implications for mental health as executive functions are disrupted in most all psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, depression, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Our Goal is to Examine 3 Major Questions:

  1. What types of mental representations and processes support and enable executive function?
  2. How do neural systems, most notably those of prefrontal cortex, support and enable executive function?
  3. How can our understanding of executive function be linked across computational, psychological, and neurobiological levels of analysis?

neuron

Coming Events: DEFD Annual Conference

Title: The Role of Inhibition in Executive Function
Time: January 12th-January 13th, 2012
The NIMH Interdisciplinary Behavioral Science Center will be hosting a conference to consider the questions: "What mechanisms support inhibitory processes in executive function?" and the question "How do these inhibitory processes contribute to clinical and behavioral outcomes?" Participants are invited to present a poster.

Please click here for more information.