Annalise Whines is a PhD student in the Mental Health Neuroscience Group at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, supervised by Professor Camilla Nord and Dr Sara Mehrhof. Her background is in cognitive neuroscience, and her research explores how the menstrual cycle, particularly changes in estradiol, affects motivation and mental health. Using an effort-based decision-making task and computational modelling, she studies how hormonal fluctuations shape the way people weigh effort against reward, with the broader goal of understanding the neurocognitive mechansims linking hormones and psychiatric symptoms.