Mental models and cognitive control

As part of the Distinguished Lectures promoted by the Padova Neuroscience Center (PNC) of the University of Padua, on Thursday 1 October 2026 John Duncan (University of Cambridge) will give a seminar entitled “Mental models and cognitive control” at the Fondazione Ricerca Biomedica Avanzata VIMM.

A classical approach to cognitive control identifies abstract control functions (for example inhibition, set shifting), perhaps associated with specific approximate regions of the frontal lobe. This way of framing the problem is believed to be mistaken. Behaviour is guided by a whole-mind model of the current situation, in which many parts are integrated into their correct roles and relationships. 

At the centre of this integration lies the brain’s multiple-demand (MD) system, with closely connected but widely distributed components across the cortex and associated subcortical nuclei. Information enters and leaves this system through strong local connections with numerous brain networks; interconnectivity among MD regions promotes integration. For different cognitive activities, this connectivity model creates a pattern of broad co-recruitment of MD regions, associated with local quantitative variations linked to different and more specialised brain networks. 

This framework is illustrated by detailed activity patterns relating to three classical control functions – updating, switching and inhibition – and by electrophysiological data from monkeys engaged in solving a spatial maze. Classical approaches to control are believed to need to be abandoned in favour of an approach that considers the brain as a whole with regard to the construction and use of mental models.

John Duncan is a scientific researcher at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit of the University of Cambridge, as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society and the British Academy. In 2012 he received the Heineken Prize for Cognitive Science from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He has focused on psychological abilities such as selective attention and intelligent decision-making, and has developed explanatory theories based on the underlying brain activity. His ideas range from patterns of activation in individual neurons to models of human behaviour.

The seminar, in English, is intended particularly for teaching staff, research staff, and doctoral students.

For further information: administration.pnc@unipd.it