Masud Husain

Subsequent behavioural studies revealed that some people with hemispatial neglect can also suffer from impaired spatial working memory,[17] often revisiting locations without being aware that they have fixated them before.

[30][31] Instead, this research revealed that although short-term memory is a highly limited resource, it can be flexibly deployed depending upon task demands.

[34] Work from Husain's lab showed that lesions to ventral basal ganglia leads to a condition of profound apathy, manifest as a lack of motivation to initiate action and specifically attributable to a deficit in reward sensitivity.

[39][40] This has led to a theoretical framework to understand mechanisms underlying apathy across brain disorders which incorporates concepts from cost-benefit decision making to formalise how people differ in their willingness to engage in effort in order to obtain potential rewards.

[46][47] A key component of voluntary control paradoxically appears to involve inhibition of unwanted actions that are primed automatically by seeing objects around us.

He was awarded a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellowship (2012-2023) and elected Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences (2008).