Project Grant R01MH141485

The National Institute of Mental Health awarded the University of Southern California $751,034 on August 6, 2026, under the Mental Health Research Grants program (CFDA 93.242) to support a neuroscience research project examining how the brain processes uncertainty in noisy, dynamically changing environments.

The project, titled "Unraveling Neural Mechanisms Underlying Learning in a Noisy, Dynamically Changing World," investigates computational and neural mechanisms by which the brain distinguishes between moment-to-moment stochasticity of observations and environmental volatility—two types of uncertainty that require opposite learning strategies and are central to anxiety disorders, behavioral addictions, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and schizophrenia. The research employs a large-scale neuroimaging program combining behavioral assessment, computational modeling, simultaneous fMRI-pupillometry, and causal arousal manipulation across three specific aims: elucidating neurocomputational mechanisms of uncertainty processing; determining whether these mechanisms are causally linked to arousal mediated by the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system; and examining how these processes differ across outcome types. Work will be performed in Los Angeles, California, with a period of performance extending from award through April 30, 2031. This award is classified as a Project Grant, with up to five years of support permitted under the program structure.