It is commonly acknowledged that movement performance is determined by a trade-off between accuracy requirements and energetic expenditure. However, their relative weights are subjective and depend on the perceived benefit (or cost) associated to successful movement completion. A deeper knowledge on how this trade-off affects motor behavior may suggest ways to manipulate it in pathologies, like Parkinson's disease, in which the mechanisms underlying the selection of motor response are believed to be defective. In this preliminary study, we associate a monetary incentive to successful completion of a full-body reaching task and look at the determinants of motor performance. Our preliminary results suggest that motor performance (measured as the absolute average acceleration of hand movements) increases with movement amplitude/target elevation. Overall, performance also increases with the amount of monetary incentive and with the average reward experienced in previous trials. In addition, subjects with a greater sensitivity to incentive exhibit a low sensitivity to the average reward. In contrast, subjects with a negative sensitivity to incentive exhibit a smaller sensitivity to the average reward. These results suggest that motor performance has a complex relation with its perceived benefits, and this relation is probably subject-dependent.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.