RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Looking for a sign forecasting failure in actions: reaching errors triggered by a slowdown of movement and specific brain activity in preceding trials
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2022.08.23.505043
DO 10.1101/2022.08.23.505043
A1 Toshiki Kobayashi
A1 Mitsuaki Takemi
A1 Daichi Nozaki
YR 2022
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/08/25/2022.08.23.505043.abstract
AB Even experts can sometimes fail while performing fully learned movements. Do such failures suddenly arise, or are there any forecasting signs? It has been reported that the kinematics of the early phase of movements can predict the failure, and brain activity patterns specific to failures are observed just before the movement onset. The presence of abnormal brain activity patterns long before (> 30 s) a failure in a cognitive task leads us to question if signs of a failure in action could exist in trials preceding the failure. Here, we examined this question using a reaching movement adaptation paradigm conventionally used to test motor learning dynamics. Firstly, the presence of a behavioral sign that preceded failures was observed: the peak velocity of the reaching movement significantly decreased in the preceding two trials. Secondly, specific theta and alpha band activity of EEG were observed in the failure trials and the trials preceding the failure. These results suggest that a failure in actions does not occur suddenly, and some signs preceding failures can be observed in the prior trials. Our approach may pave the way to investigate how we prevent failures and improve motor performance.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.