Dissociation between mental fatigue and loss of motivation
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1
University of Louvain, Belgium
Mental fatigue (MF) is commonly observed following prolonged mental activity and some have argued that MF could be caused by a progressive loss of motivation to engage in the task. To address this issue, we asked healthy subjects to participate in a 190 minute-long experiment where MF was induced by performing Sudoku puzzles. The behavioural effects of MF were then measured at regular intervals, by means of a Working Memory task (WM task) in which extrinsic motivation was manipulated by using different levels of monetary reward. In addition, we assessed motivation by means of a series of psychophysiological measurements (EEG, ECG, Skin conductance and Pupillometry). We found that, at the end of the experiment, the subjective feeling of fatigue increased in the participants while their performance in the WM task got gradually worse. Psychophysiological and behavioural measures concurred in showing that this performance drop was not associated to a decreased motivation. This indicates that MF is not caused by a loss of motivation but is likely to be the consequence of a decrease in the efficiency, or availability, of the cognitive resources.
Keywords:
Mental Fatigue,
Motivation,
EEG,
ECG,
Pupillometry,
Skin conductance response
Conference:
11th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience, Mons, Belgium, 22 May - 22 May, 2015.
Presentation Type:
Poster presentation
Topic:
Neuroscience
Citation:
Gergelyfi
M,
Jacob
B,
OLIVIER
E and
Zénon
A
(2015). Dissociation between mental fatigue and loss of motivation.
Front. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
11th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2015.89.00067
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Received:
30 Apr 2015;
Published Online:
05 May 2015.
*
Correspondence:
Miss. Monika Gergelyfi, University of Louvain, Brussels, 1200, Belgium, monika.gergelyfi@uclouvain.be