Action Preparation: an integrated Perspective of Choice and Motor Control
-
1
Institute of NeuroScience, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
-
2
Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium
-
3
Center for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Adaptive sensorimotor interaction requires fine movement preparation (Gallivan, Chapman, Wolpert, & Flanagan, 2018). By applying transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the primary motor cortex (M1) to elicit motor evoked potentials (MEPs) in muscles of the contralateral hand (Bestmann & Duque, 2016), many studies have shown that action preparation is associated with a transient decrease in the excitability of the corticospinal pathway; this phenomenon has been referred to as preparatory inhibition (Duque, Greenhouse, Labruna, & Ivry, 2017). Intriguingly, while a growing number of studies support the extreme robustness of this effect, the role of such preparatory inhibition remains fundamentally unclear.
Our long-term goal is to test the hypothesis that preparatory inhibition reflects the operation of processes that assist action preparation at the level of both choice and motor control. In the context of choice, preparatory inhibition would serve to regulate a speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT), with more inhibition favoring accuracy over speed. Furthermore, in the context of motor control, preparatory inhibition would facilitate the fine-tuning of muscle activity, with stronger inhibition increasing the gain of motor commands. To test these hypotheses, we recently developed a new experimental task that combines the Tokens Task (Thura & Cisek, 2014, 2017) and some features of the Pac-Man video-game (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man). In brief, at each trial of this task, called the “Tok-Man” Task, tokens jump one-by-one from a central circle to one of two lateral circles. Subjects must then foresee which of both circles will receive more tokens by the end of the trial, and report it by pressing a button on a keyboard with their left or right index finger. Subjects may respond whenever they feel confident to make a choice, but necessarily before the last token jump. Once their choice is made, the motor control part of the trial initiates, by showing a Pac-Man on the screen. Subjects have to perform tapping movements with the chosen index finger to move the Pac-Man towards the chosen circle, while grabbing additional tokens on its way. In summary, the SAT in this task is manipulated by requiring subjects to make either fast or slow (accurate) choices, while motor tuning requirements are manipulated by requiring subjects to prepare faster or slower tapping movements. Importantly, these requirements are manipulated independently of each other, thus crossing choice and motor control instructions in four different block types.
The goal here is to report preliminary behavioral data acquired on healthy subjects with this new Tok-Man Task (n=10). Our data indicates that participants adjusted their SAT according to the choice instruction: when the emphasis was on decision speed over accuracy, subjects made faster and less accurate choices. Moreover, subjects were able to change the speed of their tapping movements according to the motor control instruction, and were able to do so regardless of the SAT requirement. Hence, participants were globally able to follow choice and motor control instructions separately.
References
Bestmann, S., & Duque, J. (2016). Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: Decomposing the Processes Underlying Action Preparation. Neuroscientist, 22(4), 392-405. doi:10.1177/1073858415592594
Duque, J., Greenhouse, I., Labruna, L., & Ivry, R. B. (2017). Physiological Markers of Motor Inhibition during Human Behavior. Trends Neurosci, 40(4), 219-236. doi:10.1016/j.tins.2017.02.006
Gallivan, J. P., Chapman, C. S., Wolpert, D. M., & Flanagan, J. R. (2018). Decision-making in sensorimotor control. Nat Rev Neurosci, 19(9), 519-534. doi:10.1038/s41583-018-0045-9
Thura, D., & Cisek, P. (2014). Deliberation and commitment in the premotor and primary motor cortex during dynamic decision making. Neuron, 81(6), 1401-1416. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2014.01.031
Thura, D., & Cisek, P. (2017). The Basal Ganglia Do Not Select Reach Targets but Control the Urgency of Commitment. Neuron, 95(5), 1160-1170.e1165. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2017.07.039
Keywords:
action selection,
Speed-accuracy tradeoff,
Action specification,
motor control,
choice - behaviour
Conference:
13th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience , Brussels, Belgium, 24 May - 24 May, 2019.
Presentation Type:
Poster presentation
Topic:
Behavioral/Systems Neuroscience
Citation:
Fievez
F,
Cos
I,
Derosiere
G,
Quoilin
C,
Lambert
J and
Duque
J
(2019). Action Preparation: an integrated Perspective of Choice and Motor Control.
Front. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
13th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience .
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2019.96.00081
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
17 Apr 2019;
Published Online:
27 Sep 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Miss. Fanny Fievez, Institute of NeuroScience, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, fanny.fievez@uclouvain.be