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Neuron Jun 2023In this issue of Neuron, Khazali et al. record neural activity during coordinated reaches and saccades. They find that excitatory neurons link arm and eye movement...
In this issue of Neuron, Khazali et al. record neural activity during coordinated reaches and saccades. They find that excitatory neurons link arm and eye movement regions of parietal cortex, creating a multiregional mode that predicts movement timing and direction.
Topics: Animals; Psychomotor Performance; Macaca mulatta; Neurons; Parietal Lobe; Saccades
PubMed: 37348458
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2023.05.030 -
Experimental Brain Research Jan 2020Both intrapersonal and interpersonal coordination dynamics have traditionally been investigated using relative phase patterns of in-phase (ϕ = 0°) and/or...
Both intrapersonal and interpersonal coordination dynamics have traditionally been investigated using relative phase patterns of in-phase (ϕ = 0°) and/or anti-phase (ϕ = 180°). Numerous investigations have demonstrated that coordination tasks that require other relative phase patterns (e.g., 90°) are difficult or near impossible to perform without extended practice. Recent findings, however, have demonstrated that an individual can produce a wide range of intrapersonal bimanual patterns within a few minutes of practice when provided integrated feedback. The present experiment was designed to directly compare intra- and interpersonal coordination performance and variability when provided Lissajous feedback or pacing metronome. Single participants (N = 12) and pairs of participants (N = 24, 12 pairs) were required to produce relative phase patterns between 0° and 180° in 30° increments using either pacing metronomes or Lissajous displays. The Lissajous displays involved a goal template and a cursor providing integrated feedback regarding the position of the two effectors. The results indicated both single and pairs of participants could effectively produce a large range of coordination patterns that typically act as repellers after only 6 min of practice when provided integrated feedback. However, single participants performed the in-phase coordination pattern more accurately and with less variability than paired participants, regardless of the feedback condition. These results suggest an advantage for intrapersonal coordination when performing in-phase coordination, possibly due to the stabilizing effect occurring via the neuro-muscular linkage between effectors.
Topics: Adult; Cooperative Behavior; Feedback, Psychological; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Psychomotor Performance; Young Adult
PubMed: 31754737
DOI: 10.1007/s00221-019-05676-y -
Psychophysiology Jul 2024With the discovery of event-related potentials elicited by errors more than 30 years ago, a new avenue of research on performance monitoring, cognitive control, and... (Review)
Review
With the discovery of event-related potentials elicited by errors more than 30 years ago, a new avenue of research on performance monitoring, cognitive control, and decision making emerged. Since then, the field has developed and expanded fulminantly. After a brief overview on the EEG correlates of performance monitoring, this article reviews recent advancements based on single-trial analyses using independent component analysis, multiple regression, and multivariate pattern classification. Given the close interconnection between performance monitoring and reinforcement learning, computational modeling and model-based EEG analyses have made a particularly strong impact. The reviewed findings demonstrate that error- and feedback-related EEG dynamics represent variables reflecting how performance-monitoring signals are weighted and transformed into an adaptation signal that guides future decisions and actions. The model-based single-trial analysis approach goes far beyond conventional peak-and-trough analyses of event-related potentials and enables testing mechanistic theories of performance monitoring, cognitive control, and decision making.
Topics: Humans; Electroencephalography; Evoked Potentials; Decision Making; Brain; Psychomotor Performance
PubMed: 38415791
DOI: 10.1111/psyp.14553 -
Experimental Brain Research Jan 2021The control of human movements is thought to automize with repetition, promoting consistent execution and reduced dual-task costs. However, contingencies such as illness...
The control of human movements is thought to automize with repetition, promoting consistent execution and reduced dual-task costs. However, contingencies such as illness or constraints to regular movement patterns can promote conscious motor control, which can reduce movement proficiency and make dual-task situations more difficult. This experiment evaluated whether electroencephalographic neurofeedback training can reduce the adverse effects of conscious motor control. Twenty-five participants completed the timed-up-and-go task while wearing a leg brace to de-automize their regular movement, under both single and dual-task (walking + serial sevens) conditions, both before and after 30-min of neurofeedback training. Three different types of neurofeedback were prescribed across three laboratory visits. We hypothesised that training to decrease central EEG alpha-power at scalp sites above the supplementary motor area would facilitate performance compared to opposite (increase central EEG alpha-power) or sham neurofeedback training. Results revealed a pre-test to post-test improvement in performance on the single-task and on both aspects of the dual-task when participants were trained to decrease central EEG alpha-power. There were no benefits of opposite or sham neurofeedback training. Mediation analyses revealed that the improvement in dual-task motor performance was mediated by the improvement in cognitive performance. This suggests that the neurofeedback protocol was beneficial because it helped to reduce conscious control of the motor task. The findings could have important implications for rehabilitation and high-performance (e.g., elite sport) domains; neurofeedback could be prescribed to help alleviate the problems that can arise when individuals exert conscious motor control.
Topics: Electroencephalography; Humans; Movement; Neurofeedback; Psychomotor Performance; Task Performance and Analysis
PubMed: 33165672
DOI: 10.1007/s00221-020-05935-3 -
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Oct 2020With the advancement of technologies like in-car navigation and smartphones, concerns around how cognitive functioning is influenced by "workload" are increasingly... (Review)
Review
With the advancement of technologies like in-car navigation and smartphones, concerns around how cognitive functioning is influenced by "workload" are increasingly prevalent. Research shows that spreading effort across multiple tasks can impair cognitive abilities through an overuse of resources, and that similar overload effects arise in difficult single-task paradigms. We developed a novel lab-based extension of the Detection Response Task, which measures workload, and paired it with a Multiple Object Tracking Task to manipulate cognitive load. Load was manipulated either by changing within-task difficulty or by the addition of an extra task. Using quantitative cognitive modelling we showed that these manipulations cause similar cognitive impairments through diminished processing rates, but that the introduction of a second task tends to invoke more cautious response strategies that do not occur when only difficulty changes. We conclude that more prudence should be exercised when directly comparing multi-tasking and difficulty-based workload impairments, particularly when relying on measures of central tendency.
Topics: Executive Function; Humans; Models, Psychological; Psychomotor Performance
PubMed: 32440999
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-020-01741-8 -
Journal of Experimental Psychology.... Jun 2022Humans adjust their behavior after they have committed an error, but it is unclear whether and how error commissions influence voluntary task choices. In the present... (Review)
Review
Humans adjust their behavior after they have committed an error, but it is unclear whether and how error commissions influence voluntary task choices. In the present article, we review different accounts on effects of errors in the previous trial (transient error effects) and overall error probabilities (sustained error effects) on behavioral adaptation. Based on this review, we derived five statistical models of how errors might influence voluntary task choices. We analyzed the data of three experiments in which participants voluntarily selected one of two tasks before each trial whereby task difficulty, and concomitantly error probability, increased successively for the selected/performed tasks. Model comparison suggested that choice behavior was best explained by a combination of error probability of the performed task, error probability of the alternative task, and whether the previous response was correct or incorrect. The results revealed that participants were most likely to switch tasks in situations where the error probability of the performed task was high, the error probability of the alternative task was low, and after an error on the previous trial. We conclude that task selection processes are influenced by transient and sustained error effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Humans; Probability; Psychomotor Performance; Reaction Time
PubMed: 35511545
DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000991 -
Experimental Brain Research Apr 2024Psychomotor slowing has consistently been observed in schizophrenia, however research on motor learning in schizophrenia is limited. Additionally, motor learning in...
Psychomotor slowing has consistently been observed in schizophrenia, however research on motor learning in schizophrenia is limited. Additionally, motor learning in schizophrenia has never been compared with the waning of motor learning abilities in the elderly. Therefore, in an extensive study, 30 individuals with schizophrenia, 30 healthy age-matched controls and 30 elderly participants were compared on sensorimotor learning tasks including sequence learning and adaptation (both explicit and implicit), as well as tracking and aiming. This paper presents new findings on an explicit motor sequence learning task, an explicit verbal learning task and a simple aiming task and summarizes all previously published findings of this large investigation. Individuals with schizophrenia and elderly had slower Movement Time (MT)s compared with controls in all tasks, however both groups improved over time. Elderly participants learned slower on tracking and explicit sequence learning while individuals with schizophrenia adapted slower and to a lesser extent to movement perturbations in adaptation tasks and performed less well on cognitive tests including the verbal learning task. Results suggest that motor slowing is present in schizophrenia and the elderly, however both groups show significant but different motor skill learning. Cognitive deficits seem to interfere with motor learning and performance in schizophrenia while task complexity and decreased movement precision interferes with motor learning in the elderly, reflecting different underlying patterns of decline in these conditions. In addition, evidence for motor slowing together with impaired implicit adaptation supports the influence of cerebellum and the cerebello-thalamo-cortical-cerebellar (CTCC) circuits in schizophrenia, important for further understanding the pathophysiology of the disorder.
Topics: Humans; Aged; Psychomotor Performance; Schizophrenia; Learning; Aging; Verbal Learning
PubMed: 38459999
DOI: 10.1007/s00221-024-06797-9 -
Journal of Neurophysiology Jan 2023Bilateral training systems look to promote the paretic hand's use in individuals with hemiplegia. Although this is normally achieved using mechanical coupling (i.e., a...
Bilateral training systems look to promote the paretic hand's use in individuals with hemiplegia. Although this is normally achieved using mechanical coupling (i.e., a physical connection between the hands), a virtual reality system relying on virtual coupling (i.e., through a shared virtual object) would be simpler to use and prevent slacking. However, it is not clear whether different coupling modes differently impact task performance and effort distribution between the hands. We explored how 18 healthy right-handed participants changed their motor behaviors in response to the uninstructed addition of mechanical coupling, and virtual coupling using a shared cursor mapped to the average hands' position. In a second experiment, we then studied the impact of connection stiffness on performance, perception, and effort imbalance. The results indicated that both coupling types can induce the hands to actively contribute to the task. However, the task asymmetry introduced by using a cursor mapped to either the left or right hand only modulated the hands' contribution when not mechanically coupled. The tracking performance was similar for all coupling types, independent of the connection stiffness, although the mechanical coupling was preferred and induced the hands to move with greater correlation. These findings suggest that virtual coupling can induce the hands to actively contribute to a task in healthy participants without hindering their performance. Further investigation on the coupling types' impact on the performance and hands' effort distribution in patients with hemiplegia could allow for the design of simpler training systems that promote the affected hand's use. We showed that the uninstructed addition of a virtual and/or a mechanical coupling can induce both hands to actively contribute in a continuous redundant bimanual tracking task without impacting performance. In addition, we showed that the task asymmetry can only alter the effort distribution when the hands are not connected, independent of the connection stiffness. Our findings suggest that virtual coupling could be used in the development of simpler VR-based training devices.
Topics: Humans; Psychomotor Performance; Hemiplegia; Hand; Task Performance and Analysis; Hand Strength; Functional Laterality
PubMed: 36475891
DOI: 10.1152/jn.00057.2022 -
Psychological Research Mar 2021An emerging literature has suggested that self-relevance automatically enhances stimulus processing (i.e., the self-prioritization effect). Specifically, during... (Review)
Review
An emerging literature has suggested that self-relevance automatically enhances stimulus processing (i.e., the self-prioritization effect). Specifically, during shape-label matching tasks, geometric shapes associated with the self are identified more rapidly than comparable stimuli paired with other targets (e.g., friend, stranger). Replicating and extending work that challenges the putative automaticity of this effect, here we hypothesized that self-relevance facilitates stimulus processing only when task sets draw attention to previously formed shape-label associations in memory. The results of a shape-classification task confirmed this prediction. Compared to shapes associated with a friend, those paired with the self were classified more rapidly when participants were required to report who the stimulus denoted (i.e., self or friend). In contrast, self-relevance failed to facilitate performance when participants judged either what the shape was (i.e., triangle or square, diamond or circle) or where it was located on the screen (i.e., above or below fixation). These findings further elucidate the conditions under which self-relevance does-and does not-influence stimulus processing.
Topics: Adult; Auditory Perception; Female; Humans; Male; Psychomotor Performance; Recognition, Psychology; Self Concept; Social Perception; Young Adult
PubMed: 31919569
DOI: 10.1007/s00426-019-01283-2 -
Laterality Nov 2019Dichotic listening is a well-established method to non-invasively assess hemispheric specialization for processing of speech and other auditory stimuli. However, almost... (Review)
Review
Dichotic listening is a well-established method to non-invasively assess hemispheric specialization for processing of speech and other auditory stimuli. However, almost six decades of research also have revealed a series of experimental variables with systematic modulatory effects on task performance. These variables are a source of systematic error variance in the data and, when uncontrolled, affect the reliability and validity of the obtained laterality measures. The present review provides a comprehensive overview of these modulatory variables and offers both guiding principles as well as concrete suggestions on how to account for possible confounding effects and avoid common pitfalls. The review additionally provides guidance for the evaluation of past studies and help for resolving inconsistencies in the available literature.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Dichotic Listening Tests; Dominance, Cerebral; Functional Laterality; Humans; Psychomotor Performance; Reproducibility of Results
PubMed: 30922169
DOI: 10.1080/1357650X.2019.1598426