Assessment of parallel movement plans by probing spatial attention
Final Report Abstract
Our environment constantly presents us with multiple opportunities and demands for action. At any given moment, we must select one of all possible actions and specify the corresponding movement metrics. It has been proposed that the sensorimotor system continuously and simultaneously processes sensory information to specify multiple potential motor plans in parallel which compete for execution, while other brain regions collect information to bias this competition to select the most appropriate action. However, there is ongoing debate about which aspects of actions are represented in parallel. The main objective was to shed light on the question whether parallel processing is limited to the level of motor goals (i.e. what to do) or whether the brain is also capable of specifying multiple motor plans in parallel (i.e., how to do it) using spatial attention as an index of motor goal selection and motor planning. To this end, we combined a delayed cueing paradigm in which participants performed center-out reaching movements with a visuospatial attention task in which they had to discriminate visual stimuli presented at different locations and timepoints. We found that in situations of target uncertainty visuospatial attention is allocated to multiple potential motor goals in parallel and further increases at the finally selected goal. We further demonstrated that key temporal aspects of visuospatial attention are predicted by a well-known computational model of decision-making. These findings suggest that performance advantages ascribed to visual attention not only reflect that a motor goal has been selected; instead, the time course of emergent attention-based performance advantages reflects the time-extended, cumulative decision process that leads to selecting that goal. Our project further sought to answer the question whether parallel processing is also possible at the level of motor planning. We pursued this question by combining the visuospatial attention task with two different approaches that allowed dissociating motor goal selection from motor planning: an obstacle avoidance task and a visuomotor adaptation paradigm. However, unexpected methodological challenges significantly delayed our progress and prevented us from obtaining conclusive results.
Publications
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Spatial attention reflects parallel encoding of motor goals in situations of target uncertainty. In A. Klostermann, C. Vater, E.-J. Hossner (Eds.), Sportmotorik 2019. Adaptation, Lernen und virtuelle Welten (p. 58). Abstractband zur 16. Jahrestagung der dvs-Sektion Sportmotorik vom 16.-18. Januar 2019 in Bern
Seegelke, C. & Heed, T.
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Attentional allocation in sensorimotor decision making reflects motor goal selection. In A. Huckauf, M. Baumann, M. Ernst, C. Herbert, M. Kiefer, M. Sauter (Eds.), Abstracts of the 63. Tagung experimentell arbeitender Psychologen (TeaP)(p. 222-223). Lengerich: Pabst Science Publishers
Schonard, C., Heed, T. & Seegelke, C.
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Dissociating hemispheric- from effector-specific repetition effects in action selection. In A. Huckauf, M. Baumann, M. Ernst, C. Herbert, M. Kiefer, M. Sauter (Eds.), Abstracts of the 63. Tagung experimentell arbeitender Psychologen (TeaP)(p. 227). Lengerich: Pabst Science Publishers
Seegelke, C. & Heed, T.
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Motor decisions between potential targets are reflected in visuospatial attention. Neural Control of Movement (NCM), April 20-22, 2021, Online (Poster)
Schonard, C., Heed, T. & Seegelke, C.
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Repetition effects in action planning reflect effector- but not hemisphere-specific coding. Journal of Neurophysiology, 126(6), 2001-2013.
Seegelke, Christian; Schonard, Carolin & Heed, Tobias
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Repetition effects in action selection: dissociating hemispheric from effector specificity. Neural Control of Movement (NCM), April 20-22, 2021, Online (Poster)
Seegelke, C. & Heed, T.
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Allocation of Visuospatial Attention Indexes Evidence Accumulation for Reach Decisions. eneuro, 9(6), ENEURO.0313-22.2022.
Schonard, Carolin; Heed, Tobias & Seegelke, Christian
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Effector selection precedes movement specification: evidence from repetition effects in motor planning. Experimental Brain Research, 243(3).
Seegelke, Christian & Heed, Tobias
