3 research outputs found
Transcranial direct current stimulation in sports training: potential approaches
No full textIn recent years several studies have focused on the application of non-invasive brain stimulation in motor training and rehabilitation. Of particular promise is transcranial direct stimulation (tDCS), which has been shown to produce improvements in motor behavior in normal adults and appears to offer utility for enhancing training-induced improvements in motor function in those suffering cortical damage (e.g. stroke patients). This raises the possibility of the use of tDCS more broadly, including in motor training in sport. In this opinion piece we discuss the potential utility of tDCS in sports training and the extent to which individual differences in motor expertise may influence the efficacy of tDCS on motor learning. In addition we discuss different aspects of motor learning that may be enhanced by tDCS and target brain regions that may be good candidates for this process.</p
Being watched by others eliminates the effect of emotional arousal on inhibitory control
No full textThe psychological effect of being watched by others has been proven a powerful tool in modulating social behaviors (e.g., charitable giving) and altering cognitive performance (e.g., visual search). Here we tested whether such awareness would affect one of the core elements of human cognition: emotional processing and impulse control. Using an emotion stop-signal paradigm, we found that viewing emotionally-arousing erotic images before attempting to inhibit a motor response impaired participants’ inhibition ability, but such an impairing effect was completely eliminated when participants were led to believe that their facial expressions were monitored by a webcam. Furthermore, there was no post-error slowing in any of the conditions, thus these results cannot be explained by a deliberate speed-accuracy tradeoff or other types of conscious shift in strategy. Together, these findings demonstrate that the interaction between emotional arousal and impulse control can be dependent on one’s state of self-consciousness. Furthermore, this study also highlights the effect that the mere presence of the experimenter may have on participants’ cognitive performance, even if it’s via a webcam
Motor empathy is a consequence of misattribution of sensory information in observers
No full textHuman behavior depends crucially on the ability to interact with others and empathy has a critical role in enabling this to occur effectively. This can be an unconscious process and based on natural instinct and inner imitation (Montag et al., 2008) responding to observed and executed actions (Newman-Norlund et al., 2007). Motor empathy relating to painful stimuli is argued to occur via the mirror system in motor areas (Rizzolatti and Luppino, 2001). Here we investigated the effects of the location of emotional information on the responses of this system. Motor evoked potential (MEP) amplitudes from the right first dorsal interosseus (FDI) muscle in the hand elicited by single pulses of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) delivered over the left motor cortex were measured while participants observed a video of a needle entering a hand over the FDI muscle, representing a painful experience for others. To maintain subjects' internal representation across different viewing distances, we used the same size of hand stimuli both in peripersonal and extrapersonal space. We found a reduced MEP response, indicative of inhibition of the corticospinal system, only for stimuli presented in peripersonal space and not in extrapersonal space. This empathy response only occurring for near space stimuli suggests that it may be a consequence of misidentification of sensory information as being directly related to the observer. A follow up experiment confirmed that the effect was not a consequence of the size of the stimuli presented, in agreement with the importance of the near space/far space boundary for misattribution of body related information. This is consistent with the idea that empathy is, at least partially, a consequence of misattribution of perceptual information relating to another to the observer and that pain perception is modulated by the nature of perception of the pain
