CCN Forum - Development Talks
Tyler Adkins; Graduate Student, CCN and Hyesue Jang; Graduate Student, CCN
Tyler Adkins:
Title:
Rewards enhance multi-voxel decoding of lightly trained motor sequences
Abstract:
Prospective rewards lead to improvements in motor skill performance via an unknown neural mechanism. We hypothesize that these reward-related behavioral improvements are mediated by reward-related enhancements in neural codes which represent upcoming actions. We measured the fidelity of action-related neural codes using machine learning classifiers which attempt to decode action identity from patterns of brain activity preceding actions. We found that prospective rewards had a positive linear effect on the fidelity of action-related neural codes in canonical preparatory motor regions. However, this effect is only present for neural codes representing actions that were lightly trained—the codes for heavily trained actions were unaffected by prospective rewards. Future research should investigate this interaction between depth of training and reward.
Hyesue Jang
Title:
Losing Money and Motivation: Younger and older adults’ response to loss incentive
Abstract:
Would you be more likely to keep your New Year’s resolution if breaking it cost you $20? Loss-based incentives are common in everyday life (e.g., job/financial security, health, driving) especially for older adults. Many laboratory studies report that loss-based incentives do not affect the performance of older adults. This is often interpreted as an example of the age-related positivity effect described by Carstensen and colleagues. However, the tasks used in many laboratory studies have constraints (e.g., fast-passed trials, salient targets, frequent responses) that keep attention focused on the task. This is very different from many real-life situations. Using a more open-ended, low-salience task, we found that loss incentives reduced performance and attention to the task in older adults (Lin et al., in revision). We suggested this might reflect disengagement in response to negative feedback. In this talk, we examine the effects of loss incentive on a more traditionally-formatted task, and also examine the effects on participants’ subjective reports of task engagement, motivation, and related variables.
Title:
Rewards enhance multi-voxel decoding of lightly trained motor sequences
Abstract:
Prospective rewards lead to improvements in motor skill performance via an unknown neural mechanism. We hypothesize that these reward-related behavioral improvements are mediated by reward-related enhancements in neural codes which represent upcoming actions. We measured the fidelity of action-related neural codes using machine learning classifiers which attempt to decode action identity from patterns of brain activity preceding actions. We found that prospective rewards had a positive linear effect on the fidelity of action-related neural codes in canonical preparatory motor regions. However, this effect is only present for neural codes representing actions that were lightly trained—the codes for heavily trained actions were unaffected by prospective rewards. Future research should investigate this interaction between depth of training and reward.
Hyesue Jang
Title:
Losing Money and Motivation: Younger and older adults’ response to loss incentive
Abstract:
Would you be more likely to keep your New Year’s resolution if breaking it cost you $20? Loss-based incentives are common in everyday life (e.g., job/financial security, health, driving) especially for older adults. Many laboratory studies report that loss-based incentives do not affect the performance of older adults. This is often interpreted as an example of the age-related positivity effect described by Carstensen and colleagues. However, the tasks used in many laboratory studies have constraints (e.g., fast-passed trials, salient targets, frequent responses) that keep attention focused on the task. This is very different from many real-life situations. Using a more open-ended, low-salience task, we found that loss incentives reduced performance and attention to the task in older adults (Lin et al., in revision). We suggested this might reflect disengagement in response to negative feedback. In this talk, we examine the effects of loss incentive on a more traditionally-formatted task, and also examine the effects on participants’ subjective reports of task engagement, motivation, and related variables.
| Building: | East Hall |
|---|---|
| Event Type: | Presentation |
| Tags: | colloquium, Psychology |
| Source: | Happening @ Michigan from Department of Psychology, Cognition & Cognitive Neuroscience, Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science |
