Action Experience and Action Discovery in Medicated Individuals with Parkinson's Disease.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that markedly affects voluntary action. While regular dopamine treatment can help restore motor function, dopamine also influences cognitive portions of the action system. Previous studies have demonstrated that dopamine medication boosts action-effect associations, which are crucial for the discovery of new voluntary actions. In the present study, we investigated whether neural processes involved in the discovery of new actions are altered in PD participants on regular dopamine treatment, compared to healthy age-matched controls. We recorded brain electroencephalography (EEG) activity while PD patients and age-matched controls performed action discovery (AD) and action control tasks. We found that the novelty P3, a component normally present when there is uncertainty about the occurrence of the sensory effect, was enhanced in PD patients. However, AD was maintained in PD patients, and the novelty P3 demonstrated normal learning-related reductions. Crucially, we found that in PD patients the causal association between an action and its resulting sensory outcome did not modulate the amplitude of the feedback correct-related positivity (fCRP), an EEG component sensitive to the association between an action and its resulting effect. Collectively, these preliminary results suggest that the formation of long-term action-outcome representations may be maintained in PD patients on regular dopamine treatment, but the initial experience of action-effect association may be affected

Caregiver coping skills & children with disabilities

Color poster with text, charts, and imagesUniversity of Wisconsin--Stout Research Service

Establishing movement heuristics for voluntary action: Electrophysiological correlates of movement-outcome learning and the sense of agency

Human behaviour is effect-oriented; we perform many different types of movements to obtain and respond to a variety of sensory consequences. In our everyday lives we have the experience of being in control of our movements and the sensory outcomes they elicit. This sense of agency, and the ability to initiate voluntary movements to obtain desired outcomes, originates from learning mechanisms that associate voluntary movements and sensory outcomes that often occur together. It is the anticipation of an outcome that allows for the selection of voluntary behaviour and the experience of control over movements and the outcomes they produce. Thus, movement heuristics that capture the predictive link between movement and outcome are necessary for voluntary behaviour and the sense of agency. Event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with outcome monitoring and evaluation, namely the feedback correct-related positivity (fCRP) and the P3, were examined in this thesis to investigate the cognitive processes mediating the formation of movement heuristics. To differentiate learning a movement heuristic from previous movement-outcome learning paradigms that establish a simple one-to-one association between movement and outcome, a novel movement-learning task was developed. The task was designed so that multiple movements could elicit the desired sensory outcome, but learning of a movement heuristic depended on principal aspects common across all movements. This task and movement-related control tasks to isolate the learning component were initially tested in healthy controls. The ERP results demonstrated that the formation of a movement heuristic is the result of joint cognitive processes. Performance monitoring processes mediating the fCRP indicated the degree of movement-goal coupling, and the P3 indexed the evaluation of novel sensory information with regard to the preceding movement. It was proposed that the unique roles of the basal ganglia and the anterior cingulate cortex in the plasticity and consolidation, respectively, of movement-related information provided a potential outcome monitoring and evaluation system necessary for learning movement heuristics. To elucidate whether dysfunction of basal ganglia signalling results in disruption of movement heuristic formation, and potentially altered outcome monitoring, a study was conducted with individuals with mild Parkinson’s disease (PD). In dopamine-medicated individuals with PD there was an overall enhancement in P3 amplitude. Additionally, the lack of difference in fCRP amplitude suggested an altered outcome monitoring. These results indicated that normal functioning of basal ganglia signalling might be necessary for the proper monitoring and evaluation of sensory outcomes. Finally, the importance of outcome monitoring and evaluation to the sense of agency, were investigated using a judgment of agency task. Results from this study further emphasised the role of the fCRP as an index of movement-goal coupling, giving rise to the feeling to agency. Furthermore, the subsequent indication by the P3 that the sensory outcome was unanticipated swayed judgment to non-agency. By combining systematic manipulations of tasks along with investigations in a sample of neurologically impaired individuals, the present thesis has used a convergent approach to elucidate functional significance of the fCRP and the P3 in outcome monitoring and evaluation

Establishing movement heuristics for voluntary action: Electrophysiological correlates of movement-outcome learning and the sense of agency

Human behaviour is effect-oriented; we perform many different types of movements to obtain and respond to a variety of sensory consequences. In our everyday lives we have the experience of being in control of our movements and the sensory outcomes they elicit. This sense of agency, and the ability to initiate voluntary movements to obtain desired outcomes, originates from learning mechanisms that associate voluntary movements and sensory outcomes that often occur together. It is the anticipation of an outcome that allows for the selection of voluntary behaviour and the experience of control over movements and the outcomes they produce. Thus, movement heuristics that capture the predictive link between movement and outcome are necessary for voluntary behaviour and the sense of agency. Event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with outcome monitoring and evaluation, namely the feedback correct-related positivity (fCRP) and the P3, were examined in this thesis to investigate the cognitive processes mediating the formation of movement heuristics. To differentiate learning a movement heuristic from previous movement-outcome learning paradigms that establish a simple one-to-one association between movement and outcome, a novel movement-learning task was developed. The task was designed so that multiple movements could elicit the desired sensory outcome, but learning of a movement heuristic depended on principal aspects common across all movements. This task and movement-related control tasks to isolate the learning component were initially tested in healthy controls. The ERP results demonstrated that the formation of a movement heuristic is the result of joint cognitive processes. Performance monitoring processes mediating the fCRP indicated the degree of movement-goal coupling, and the P3 indexed the evaluation of novel sensory information with regard to the preceding movement. It was proposed that the unique roles of the basal ganglia and the anterior cingulate cortex in the plasticity and consolidation, respectively, of movement-related information provided a potential outcome monitoring and evaluation system necessary for learning movement heuristics. To elucidate whether dysfunction of basal ganglia signalling results in disruption of movement heuristic formation, and potentially altered outcome monitoring, a study was conducted with individuals with mild Parkinson’s disease (PD). In dopamine-medicated individuals with PD there was an overall enhancement in P3 amplitude. Additionally, the lack of difference in fCRP amplitude suggested an altered outcome monitoring. These results indicated that normal functioning of basal ganglia signalling might be necessary for the proper monitoring and evaluation of sensory outcomes. Finally, the importance of outcome monitoring and evaluation to the sense of agency, were investigated using a judgment of agency task. Results from this study further emphasised the role of the fCRP as an index of movement-goal coupling, giving rise to the feeling to agency. Furthermore, the subsequent indication by the P3 that the sensory outcome was unanticipated swayed judgment to non-agency. By combining systematic manipulations of tasks along with investigations in a sample of neurologically impaired individuals, the present thesis has used a convergent approach to elucidate functional significance of the fCRP and the P3 in outcome monitoring and evaluation

Village of Columbiaville recreational master plan 2001-2006

Master of ScienceNatural Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/97733/1/39015043204752.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/97733/2/39015043204752.pd

The impact of participation in strategic planning and action planning on management control effectiveness: An analysis of independent and joint effects

This research paper examines the independent and joint effects of participation in strategic planning and action planning. There is extensive research about employee participation in both the fields of strategic planning and budgeting. However, there is a lack of research about the interaction between participation in strategic planning and budgeting. Drawing on the research on participation in decision-making processes, the hypothesis is that strategic planning and action planning have both independent and joint effects on MC effectiveness. The research study draws on a large database assembled by researchers from eleven different countries. The total data set consists of personal interviews with top managers of 807 SBUs. Participation is operationalized with respect to both ends and means. The analysis shows that participative action planning has positive, direct effects on MC effectiveness, while no significant association is found for participation in strategic planning. In contrast to expectations, we also find that participative strategic planning and participative action planning decrease the effectiveness of each other, implying that they function as substitutes. We discuss and theorize further in explaining this interesting finding

Basal ganglia and cortical networks for sequential ordering and rhythm of complex movements

Voluntary actions require the concurrent engagement and coordinated control of complex temporal (e.g., rhythm) and ordinal motor processes. Using high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA), we sought to determine the degree to which these complex motor processes are dissociable in basal ganglia and cortical networks. We employed three different finger-tapping tasks that differed in the demand on the sequential temporal rhythm or sequential ordering of submovements. Our results demonstrate that sequential rhythm and sequential order tasks were partially dissociable based on activation differences. The sequential rhythm task activated a widespread network centered around the supplementary motor area (SMA) and basal-ganglia regions including the dorsomedial putamen and caudate nucleus, while the sequential order task preferentially activated a fronto-parietal network. There was also extensive overlap between sequential rhythm and sequential order tasks, with both tasks commonly activating bilateral premotor, supplementary motor, and superior/inferior parietal cortical regions, as well as regions of the caudate/putamen of the basal ganglia and the ventro-lateral thalamus. Importantly, within the cortical regions that were active for both complex movements, MVPA could accurately classify different patterns of activation for the sequential rhythm and sequential order tasks. In the basal ganglia, however, overlapping activation for the sequential rhythm and sequential order tasks, which was found in classic motor circuits of the putamen and ventro-lateral thalamus, could not be accurately differentiated by MVPA. Overall, our results highlight the convergent architecture of the motor system, where complex motor information that is spatially distributed in the cortex converges into a more compact representation in the basal ganglia