The sound of beauty: How complexity determines aesthetic preference.

Stimulus complexity is an important determinant of aesthetic preference. An influential idea is that increases in stimulus complexity lead to increased preference up to an optimal point after which preference decreases (inverted-U pattern). However, whereas some studies indeed observed this pattern, most studies instead showed an increased preference for more complexity.

Oscillatory signatures of reward prediction errors in declarative learning.

Reward prediction errors (RPEs) are crucial to learning. Whereas these mismatches between reward expectation and reward outcome are known to drive procedural learning, their role in declarative learning remains underexplored. Earlier work from our lab addressed this, and consistently found that signed reward prediction errors (SRPEs; "better-than-expected" signals) boost declarative learning.

Signed reward prediction errors drive declarative learning.

Reward prediction errors (RPEs) are thought to drive learning. This has been established in procedural learning (e.g.

Occipital alpha power reveals fast attentional inhibition of incongruent distractors.

Recent associative models of cognitive control hypothesize that cognitive control can be learned (optimized) for task-specific settings via associations between perceptual, motor, and control representations, and, once learned, control can be implemented rapidly. Midfrontal brain areas signal the need for control, and control is subsequently implemented by biasing sensory representations, boosting or suppressing activity in brain areas processing task-relevant or task-irrelevant information. To assess the timescale of this process, we employed EEG.

The time course of cognitive control implementation.

Optimally recruiting cognitive control is a key factor in efficient task performance. In line with influential cognitive control theories, earlier work assumed that control is relatively slow. We challenge this notion and test whether control also can be implemented more rapidly by investigating the time course of cognitive control.