Don’t look, don’t think, just do it! Toward an understanding of alpha gating in a discrete aiming task

© 2018 The Authors. Psychophysiology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for Psychophysiological Research Prior to and during movement, oscillatory alpha activity gates cognitive resources toward motor areas of the cortex by inhibiting neuronal excitability in nonmotor areas. The present study examined the effect of manipulating target variability on this alpha gating phenomenon. Using a baseline-test-retention design, we measured EEG alpha power, performance accuracy, and task difficulty in 32 recreational golfers as they putted golf balls (20 per target) to one central target (baseline, retention) and four targets of different directions and extents (manipulation). For participants in the random group (n = 16), target location varied with each repetition in a random fashion, whereas for participants in the blocked group (n = 16), it was kept constant within blocks. Regional analyses revealed a focal pattern of lower central alpha and higher occipital and temporal alpha. This topography was specific to preparation for movement and was associated with performance: smallest performance errors were preceded by decreased central combined with increased occipital alpha. The random group performed worse than the blocked group and found the task more difficult. Importantly, left temporal alpha prior to movement onset was lower for the random group than the blocked group. No group differences were found at baseline or retention. Our study proved that alpha gating can be altered by manipulating intertrial variability and thereby demonstrated the utility of the alpha gating model. Our findings underscore the importance of inhibiting occipital and left temporal areas when performing movements and provide further evidence that alpha gating reflects neural efficiency during motor tasks

The advantage of a quiet eye: visual processing or postural stability?

The quiet eye phenomenon describes the performance advantage conferred by a steady ocular fixation on the critical target of an action (e.g., the ball in golf putting) immediately prior to and during movement execution. Remarkably, the mechanisms underlying the quiet eye-performance association are still the subject of debate. This study adopts a novel multi-measure psychophysiological approach to shed light on the mechanisms behind the quiet eye phenomenon. We tested key predictions of two competing mechanisms: that longer quiet eye is associated with enhanced visual processing (visual hypothesis) or with greater postural-kinematic stability (postural-kinematic hypothesis). Thirty-two recreational golfers putted 20 balls to a 2-m distant target on a flat surface. We examined quiet eye durations using electrooculography, visual processing using electroencephalography, and swing duration using kinematic sensors. Occipital alpha power, an inverse neural marker of visual processing, increased prior to and during swing execution, suggesting decreased visual processing compared to a pre-putt baseline. Importantly, quiet eye duration was strongly and positively correlated with swing duration. Our findings refute the claim for enhanced visual processing in the final moments of closed-loop aiming tasks and support the postural-kinematic account that the duration of the quiet eye is associated with a slow movement execution

Assessing ocular activity during performance of motor skills using electrooculography

© 2018 The Authors. Psychophysiology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for Psychophysiological Research Eye-tracking research has revealed that, compared to novices, experts make longer ocular fixations on the target of an action when performing motor skills; that is, they have a longer quiet eye. Remarkably, the reason why a longer quiet eye aids movement has yet to be established. There is a need for interdisciplinary research and new measures to accelerate progress on the mechanistic understanding of the phenomenon. With the aim to provide researchers with new tools, we assessed the utility of electrooculography (EOG) to examine ocular activity while 10 experts and 10 novices putted golf balls. We measured quiet eye durations, distinguishing its pre- and postmovement initiation components, and developed a novel time-varying index of ocular activity, eye quietness, computed as the variability of the EOG in short time intervals: lower values correspond with greater quietness. Finally, we measured movement durations using a combination of infrared and sound sensors. Experts had longer postmovement initiation quiet eye compared to novices; however, total and premovement quiet eye durations did not differ between groups. Eye quietness was inversely correlated with quiet eye duration, and was greatest immediately after movement initiation. Importantly, movement duration correlated positively with postmovement initiation quiet eye and negatively with eye quietness shortly after movement initiation. This study demonstrates the utility of assessing ocular activity during performance of motor skills using EOG. Additionally, these findings provide evidence that expert–novice differences in ocular activity may reflect differences in the kinematics (e.g., movement duration) of how experts and novices execute motor skills