  The low energy effective actions which arise from string theory or M-theory
are considered in the cosmological context, where the graviton, dilaton and
antisymmetric tensor field strengths depend only on time. We show that previous
results can be extended to include cosmological solutions that are related to
the E_N Toda equations. The solutions of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation in
minisuperspace are obtained for some of the simpler cosmological models by
introducing intertwining operators that generate canonical transformations
which map the theories into free theories. We study the cosmological properties
of these solutions, and also briefly discuss generalised Brans-Dicke models in
our framework. The cosmological models are closely related to p-brane solitons,
which we discuss in the context of the E_N Toda equations. We give the explicit
solutions for extremal multi-charge (D-3)-branes in the truncated system
described by the D_4 =O(4,4) Toda equations.
