Willingness towards cognitive engagement: a preliminary study based on a behavioural entropy approach

Faced with a novel task some people enthusiastically embark in it and work with determination, while others soon lose interest and progressively reduce their efforts. Although cognitive neuroscience has explored the behavioural and neural features of apathy, the why’s and how’s of positive engagement are only starting to be understood. Stemming from the observation that the left hemisphere is commonly associated to a proactive (‘do something’) disposition, we run a preliminary study exploring the possibility that individual variability in eagerness to engage in cognitive tasks could reflect a preferred left- or right-hemisphere functioning mode. We adapted a task based on response-independent reinforcement and used entropy to characterize the degree of involvement, diversification, and predictability of responses. Entropy was higher in women, who were overall more active, less dependent on instructions, and never reduced their engagement during the task. Conversely, men showed lower entropy, took longer pauses, and became significantly less active by the end of the allotted time, renewing their efforts mainly in response to negative incentives. These findings are discussed in the light of neurobiological data on gender differences in behaviour

Willingness towards cognitive engagement: a preliminary study based on a behavioural entropy approach

Faced with a novel task some people enthusiastically embark in it and work with determination, while others soon lose interest and progressively reduce their efforts. Although cognitive neuroscience has explored the behavioural and neural features of apathy, the why’s and how’s of positive engagement are only starting to be understood. Stemming from the observation that the left hemisphere is commonly associated to a proactive (‘do something’) disposition, we run a preliminary study exploring the possibility that individual variability in eagerness to engage in cognitive tasks could reflect a preferred left- or right-hemisphere functioning mode. We adapted a task based on response-independent reinforcement and used entropy to characterize the degree of involvement, diversification, and predictability of responses. Entropy was higher in women, who were overall more active, less dependent on instructions, and never reduced their engagement during the task. Conversely, men showed lower entropy, took longer pauses, and became significantly less active by the end of the allotted time, renewing their efforts mainly in response to negative incentives. These findings are discussed in the light of neurobiological data on gender differences in behaviour

A Dance to the Music of Time: Aesthetically-Relevant Changes in Body Posture in Performing Art

In performing arts, body postures are both means for expressing an artist's intentions, and also artistic objects, appealing to the audience. The postures of classical ballet obey the body's biomechanical limits, but also follow strict rules established by tradition. This combination offers a perfect milieu for assessing scientifically how the execution of this particular artistic activity has changed over time, and evaluating what factors may induce such changes. We quantified angles between body segments in archive material showing dancers from a leading company over a 60-year period. The data showed that body positions supposedly fixed by codified choreography were in fact implemented by very different elevation angles, according to the year of ballet production. Progressive changes lead to increasingly vertical positions of the dancer's body over the period studied. Experimental data showed that these change reflected aesthetic choices of naïve modern observers. Even when reduced to stick figures and unrecognisable shapes, the more vertical postures drawn from later productions were systematically preferred to less vertical postures from earlier productions. This gradual change within a conservative art form provides scientific evidence that aesthetic change may arise from continuous interaction between artistic tradition, individual artists' creativity, and a wider environmental context. This context may include social aesthetic pressure from audiences

Abstract concepts and simulated competition

To better understand the social determinants of conceptual knowledge we devised a task in which participants were asked to judge the match between a definition (expressed in abstract or concrete terms) and a target-word (also either abstract or concrete). The task was presented in the form of a competition that could/could not include an opponent, and in which different percentages of response rounds were assigned to the participant at the experimenter's discretion. Thus, depending on the condition, participants were either exposed to a competitive context mimicking a privileged/unprivileged interaction with the experimenter or to a socially neutral setting. Results showed that manipulation of the social context selectively affected judgments on abstract stimuli: responses were significantly slower whenever a definition and/or a target word were presented in abstract form and when participants were in the favorable condition of responding in most of the trials. Moreover, only when processing abstract material, responses were slower when an opponent was expected to be present. Data are discussed in the frame of the different cognitive engagements involved when treating abstract and concrete concepts as well as in relation to the possible motivational factors prompted by the experimental set-up. The role of social context as a crucial element for abstract knowledge processing is also considered

Memory for Self-Performed Actions in Individuals with Asperger Syndrome

Memory for action is enhanced if individuals are allowed to perform the corresponding movements, compared to when they simply listen to them (enactment effect). Previous studies have shown that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have difficulties with processes involving the self, such as autobiographical memories and self performed actions. The present study aimed at assessing memory for action in Asperger Syndrome (AS). We investigated whether adults with AS would benefit from the enactment effect when recalling a list of previously performed items vs. items that were only visually and verbally experienced through three experimental tasks (Free Recall, Old/New Recognition and Source Memory). The results showed that while performance on Recognition and Source Memory tasks was preserved in individuals with AS, the enactment effect for self-performed actions was not consistently present, as revealed by the lower number of performed actions being recalled on the Free Recall test, as compared to adults with typical development. Subtle difficulties in encoding specific motor and proprioceptive signals during action execution in individuals with AS might affect retrieval of relevant personal episodic information. These disturbances might be associated to an impaired action monitoring system

The Dynamics of Sensorimotor Cortical Oscillations during the Observation of Hand Movements: An EEG Study

Background The observation of action done by others determines a desynchronization of the rhythms recorded from cortical central regions. Here, we examined whether the observation of different types of hand movements (target directed, non-target directed, cyclic and non-cyclic) elicits different EEG cortical temporal patterns. Methodology Video-clips of four types of hand movements were shown to right-handed healthy participants. Two were target directed (grasping and pointing) motor acts; two were non-target directed (supinating and clenching) movements. Grasping and supinating were performed once, while pointing and clenching twice (cyclic movements). High-density EEG was recorded and analyzed by means of wavelet transform, subdividing the time course in time bins of 200 ms. The observation of all presented movements produced a desynchronization of alpha and beta rhythms in central and parietal regions. The rhythms desynchronized as soon as the hand movement started, the nadir being reached around 700 ms after movement onset. At the end of the movement, a large power rebound occurred for all bands. Target and non-target directed movements produced an alpha band desynchronization in the central electrodes at the same time, but with a stronger desynchronization and a prolonged rebound for target directed motor acts. Most interestingly, there was a clear correlation between the velocity profile of the observed movements and beta band modulation. Significance Our data show that the observation of motor acts determines a modulation of cortical rhythm analogous to that occurring during motor act execution. In particular, the cortical motor system closely follows the velocity of the observed movements. This finding provides strong evidence for the presence in humans of a mechanism (mirror mechanism) mapping action observation on action execution motor programs

Do graspable objects always leave a motor signature? A study on memory traces

Several studies have reported the existence of reciprocal interactions between the type of motor activity physically performed on objects and the conceptual knowledge that is retained of them. Whether covert motor activity plays a similar effect is less clear. Certainly, objects are strong triggers for actions, and motor components can make the associated concepts more memorable. However, addition of an action-related memory trace may not always be automatic and could rather depend on 'how' objects are encountered. To test this hypothesis, we compared memory for objects that passive observers experienced as verbal labels (the word describing them), visual images (color photographs) and actions (pantomimes of object use). We predicted that the more direct the involvement of action-related representations the more effective would be the addition of a motor code to the experience and the more accurate would be the recall. Results showed that memory for objects presented as words i.e., a format that might only indirectly prime the sensorimotor system, was generally less accurate compared to memory for objects presented as photographs or pantomimes, which are more likely to directly elicit motor simulation processes. In addition, free recall of objects experienced as pantomimes was more accurate when these items afforded actions performed towards one's body than actions directed away from the body. We propose that covert motor activity can contribute to objects' memory, but the beneficial addition of a motor code to the experience is not necessarily automatic. An advantage is more likely to emerge when the observer is induced to take a first-person stance during the encoding phase, as may happen for objects affording actions directed towards the body, which obviously carry more relevance for the actor

Remembering actions without proprioception

It has been suggested that agency signals generated by enactment provide memories with an enduring episodic marker that can successively be exploited to facilitate recall. Current theories of motor awareness highlight the role of prospective and retrospective sensorimotor cues in the construction of sense of agency (SA). To explore how these signals impact on memory for actions, we studied the effect of enactment in a patient with complete loss of somatic sensation below nose level, and compared her performance to that of a group of neurologically intact individuals. A memory advantage for enacted material was clearly detectable in the control group and, interestingly, also in sensory deafferented patient GL. This novel finding shows that robust memory for actions can be obtained even in the absence of somatosensory reafferences. We hypothesize that the neural processes evoked by intention to move, together with visual experience about one's actions, provide the long-lasting agency signals that are responsible for the special quality of self-performed actions and may support autobiographical experience. Proprioceptive cues, being more time-constrained, are critical to online SA but do not necessarily partake in offline action representations