Professor Cerf's academic research uses methods from neuroscience to understand the underlying mechanisms of our psychology, behavior changes, emotion, decisions and dreams.

His works address questions such as: "How are conscious percepts formed in our brain?", "How can we control our emotions?" and “How can we make content that is engaging for the brain?"

Recently, his research has addressed questions pertaining to the neural mechanisms that underlie decision-making, thereby offering a new perspective on predicting future choices and investigating how much free will we have in our decisions. In his acclaimed work, Prof. Cerf studies patients undergoing brain-surgery by recording the activity of individual nerve cells using electrodes implanted in the patient's brain. Thus, his work offers a novel way to understand our psyche by observing the brain directly from within.