Abstract:
Human movement is sensitive to motivational factors such as
the benefits of success and the costs of failure. However, the neural,
psychological, and computational mechanisms that connect prospective value with subsequent performance remain poorly understood. In this talk, I will discuss three studies investigating the role of advanced planning in incentive-motivated action. In the first study, we examine whether reward sharpens cortical representations of action during movement preparation. In the second study, we investigate the possible optimal and sub-optimal strategies that guide people’s visuomotor decisions under risk. And in the third study, we look at the impact of reward on the competition between habitual and goal-directed action. Results across these studies indicate that reward reduces noise in the preparation of goal-directed actions and that this may be a key mechanism underlying incentive-motivated performance.