Can brain responses to movie trailers predict success?

Decades of research have shown that much of our mental processing occurs at the subconscious level, including the decisions we make as consumers. These subconscious processes explain why we so often fail to accurately predict our own future choices. Often what we think we want has little or no bearing on the choices we actually make. Now a new study provides the first evidence that brain measures can provide significant added value to models for predicting consumer choice

Mental fatigue impairs physical performance in young swimmers

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the impact of mental fatigue on heart rate variability (HRV), subjective measures of fatigue, and swimming performance in young athletes. Method: Sixteen swimmers (15.45 ± 0.51 years old, 7.35 ± 2.20 years of swimming experience) performed a 1500-m time trial on two occasions separated by an interval of at least 72 hours. The 1500-m swimming was preceded by a 30-min treatment that consisted of performing the Stroop Color-Word Test to induce mental fatigue (experimental trial), or watching an emotionally neutral video (control trial). Results: Participants reported higher ratings of mental fatigue and mental effort following the Stroop Test when compared to the control trial, but no differences in motivation were observed. The induction of mental fatigue impaired swimming performance, as evidenced by a slower performance (1.2%) to complete the 1500-m swimming trial. No inter-trial differences were identified for Rates of Perceived Exertion during the swimming test or in HRV after the Stroop and swimming tests. Conclusion: The results suggest that induction of mental fatigue impairs 1500-m swimming performance without changing HRV

A ‘spoon full of sugar’ helps the medicine go down: how a participant friendly version of a psychophysics task significantly improves task engagement, performance and data quality in a typical adult sample

Few would argue that the unique insights brought by studying the typical and atypical development of psychological processes are essential to building a comprehensive understanding of the brain. Often, however, the associated challenges of working with non-standard adult populations results in the more complex psychophysical paradigms being rejected as too complex. Recently we created a child (and clinical group) friendly implementation of one such technique – the reverse correlation Bubbles approach and noted an associated performance boost in adult participants. Here, we compare the administration of three different versions of this participant-friendly task in the same adult participants to empirically confirm that introducing elements in the experiment with the sole purpose of improving the participant experience, not only boost the participant’s engagement and motivation for the task but results in significantly improved objective task performance and stronger statistical results

Social power and approach-related neural activity

It has been argued that power activates a general tendency to approach whereas powerlessness activates a tendency to inhibit. The assumption is that elevated power involves reward-rich environments, freedom and, as a consequence, triggers an approach-related motivational orientation and attention to rewards. In contrast, reduced power is associated with increased threat, punishment and social constraint and thereby activates inhibition-related motivation. Moreover, approach motivation has been found to be associated with increased relative left-sided frontal brain activity, while withdrawal motivation has been associated with increased right sided activations. We measured EEG activity while subjects engaged in a task priming either high o

Prior Mental Fatigue Impairs Marksmanship Decision Performance

Purpose: Mental fatigue has been shown to impair subsequent physical performance in continuous and discontinuous exercise. However, its influence on subsequent fine-motor performance in an applied setting (e.g., marksmanship for trained soldiers) is relatively unknown. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether prior mental fatigue influences subsequent marksmanship performance as measured by shooting accuracy and judgment of soldiers in a live-fire scenario. Methods: Twenty trained infantry soldiers engaged targets after completing either a mental fatigue or control intervention in a repeated measure design. Heart rate variability and the NASA-TLX were used to gauge physiological and subjective effects of the interventions. Target hit proportion, projectile group accuracy, and precision were used to measure marksmanship accuracy. Marksmanship accuracy was assessed by measuring bullet group accuracy (i.e., how close a group of shots are relative to center of mass) and bullet group precision (i.e., how close are each individual shot to each other). Additionally, marksmanship decision accuracy (correctly shooting vs. correctly withholding shot) when engaging targets was used to examine marksmanship performance. Results: Soldiers rated the mentally fatiguing task (59.88 ± 23.7) as having greater mental workload relative to the control intervention [31.29 ± 12.3, t(19) = 1.72, p < 0.001]. Additionally, soldiers completing the mental fatigue intervention (96.04 ± = 37.1) also had lower time-domain (standard deviation of normal to normal R-R intervals) heart rate variability relative to the control [134.39 ± 47.4, t(18) = 3.59, p < 0.001]. Projectile group accuracy and group precision failed to show differences between interventions [t(19) = 0.98, p = 0.34, t(19) = 0.18, p = 0.87, respectively]. Marksmanship decision errors significantly increased after soldiers completed the mental fatigue intervention (48% ± 22.4) relative to the control intervention [M = 32% ± 79.9, t(19) = 4.39, p < 0.001]. There was a significant negative correlation between shooting response time and errors of commission (r = −0.61; p = 0.004) when preceded by the mental fatigue intervention, but not the control (r = −0.31; p = 0.17). Conclusion: The mental fatigue intervention was successful in eliciting fatigue which was supported subjectively and objectively. Marksmanship judgment performance is significantly reduced when soldiers are mentally fatigued, although shot accuracy is not

Mental fatigue:Costs and benefits

Mentale vermoeidheid is een psychische klacht die men steeds vaker tegen komt. Deze toename heeft verschillende oorzaken, maar een belangrijke oorzaak is zeker dat het dagelijks werk van mensen in steeds mindere mate fysiek van aard is, terwijl het mentale aspect van arbeid steeds belagnrijker wordt. Kijk alleen maar eens naar de toename van het aantal managers, maar ook naar de toename in de mate van automatisering in het hedendaagse productieproces. Dit heeft als neveneffect dat veel mensen vermoeidheidsklachten hebben. In Nederland rapporteert de helft van de vrouwelijke beroepsbevolking en een derde van de mannen dergelijke klachten. ... Zie: Summar

Mental fatigue:Costs and benefits

Mentale vermoeidheid is een psychische klacht die men steeds vaker tegen komt. Deze toename heeft verschillende oorzaken, maar een belangrijke oorzaak is zeker dat het dagelijks werk van mensen in steeds mindere mate fysiek van aard is, terwijl het mentale aspect van arbeid steeds belagnrijker wordt. Kijk alleen maar eens naar de toename van het aantal managers, maar ook naar de toename in de mate van automatisering in het hedendaagse productieproces. Dit heeft als neveneffect dat veel mensen vermoeidheidsklachten hebben. In Nederland rapporteert de helft van de vrouwelijke beroepsbevolking en een derde van de mannen dergelijke klachten. ... Zie: Summar

Drive in sports: How mental fatigue affects endurance performance

Performance in endurance sports relies on athletes' drive, which is the sum of all factors pushing athletes to exert effort during exercise. Mental fatigue can influence endurance performance by decreasing athletes' drive to exercise. From a psychological point of view, mental fatigue has two separate components: it can affect drive by increasing the perceived effort necessary for a given task ("I cannot do this, I am too exhausted"), or by decreasing the perceived value of the reward that can be obtained ("I do not want to do this, it is not worth it"). Neurophysiological theories confirm this dual nature of mental fatigue. It is suggested that mental fatigue can activate the inhibition centers of the brain, increasing perceived effort for a given task, hence decreasing drive and willingness to act. On the other hand, it may also deactivate facilitative brain centers (normally responsible for motivated behavior and increased drive toward a reward), also resulting in decreased drive. In this Perspective we will adopt a multidimensional approach, describing how mental fatigue interacts with drive and performance in endurance exercise. We aim to show how mental fatigue affects endurance performance via two main mechanisms: perceived effort and reward. We will study the interaction between mental fatigue and other factors impacting on drive, such as perceived exertion and motivation, and examine how these factors combined result in athletes' exercise behavior (such as pacing) and performance. This will provide researchers, coaches, and athletes with useful tools in order to understand, influence and enhance athletes' drive in exercise, which is of high relevance in elite endurance sports, where mental fatigue, motivation, and stakes all are of the highest level

“What’s that?” “What Went Wrong?” Positive and Negative Surprise and the Rostral–Ventral to Caudal–Dorsal Functional Gradient in the Brain

Medial prefrontal cortical (mPFC) functions may be aspects of ventral or dorsal control pathways, depending on the position along a rostral–ventral to caudal–dorsal gradient within medial cortex that may mirror the pattern of interconnections between cortex and striatum. Rostral–ventral mPFC is connected to ventral striatum and posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus are connected with dorsal striatum. Reentrant ventral (limbic), central (associative), and dorsal (motor) corticostriatal loops pass information from ventral-to-dorsal striatum, shifting hedonic processing toward habitual action. Splitting up unexpected occurrences (positive surprise) from non-occurrences (negative surprise) instead of splitting according to valence mirrors the importance of negative surprise in dorsal habitual control which is insensitive to the valence of outcomes. The importance of positive surprise and valence increases toward the rostral–ventral end of the gradient in mPFC and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. We discuss paradigms that may help to disentangle positive from negative surprise. Moreover, we think that the framework of the functional gradient may help giving various functions in mPFC their place in a larger scheme