Understanding the Inattentive and Impulsive Brain

A stroke patient can hold a thought for a moment, then lose it entirely—this programme will test whether that is a form of ultra-rapid forgetting from working memory. Inattention and impulsivity cut across stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and ADHD, yet the underlying brain mechanisms remain poorly understood. Current treatments are often blunt tools because they target symptoms without knowing the precise cognitive glitches at work. This research aims to pin down those glitches: whether impulsivity stems from an oversensitivity to rewards, whether apathy reflects the opposite, and how risky decision-making interacts with attention failures. If successful, the work could sharpen diagnosis and treatment for millions of people. A patient with Parkinson’s might receive a drug that specifically tunes reward sensitivity rather than a general dopamine boost. A stroke survivor might get cognitive training tailored to memory decay speed rather than generic attention exercises. The project also tests a new computational model of how working memory protects information from interference—fundamental science that, if validated, could reshape how neuroscientists think about attention itself. No immediate consumer product will emerge, but deeper understanding of these circuits often seeds unexpected clinical breakthroughs, as happened when basic work on dopamine led to Parkinson’s therapies.