Biology subjects

Leonard, H. C.

Publications and source records attributed to Leonard, H. C..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2020

Error-related cognitive control and behavioural adaptation mechanisms in the context of motor functioning and anxiety.

Previous research suggests that there is an interaction between cognitive and motor processes. This has been investigated throughout development and in different conditions related to motor impairment. The current study addressed a gap in the literature by investigating this interaction in the general population of healthy adults with different profiles of motor proficiency by focusing on error-related cognitive control and behavioural adaptation mechanisms. In addition, the impact of these processes was assessed in terms of experienced anxiety. Forty healthy adults were divided into high and low motor proficiency groups based on an assessment of their motor skills. Using electroencephalography (EEG) during a flanker task, error-related negativity (ERN) was measured as the neural indicator of cognitive control. Post-error slowing (PES) was measured to represent behavioural adaptation. Participants also completed an anxiety assessment questionnaire. Participants in the high motor proficiency group achieved better task accuracy and showed relatively enhanced cognitive control through increased ERN. Contrastingly, individuals in the lower motor proficiency group achieved poorer accuracy whilst showing some evidence of compensation through increased PES. Anxiety was found to be associated with motor functioning, but the study could not provide evidence that this was related to cognitive or behavioural control mechanisms. The interaction between cognitive and motor processes observed in this study is unique for healthy and sub-clinical populations and provides a baseline for the interpretation of similar investigations in individuals with motor disorders.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Motor and non-motor sequence prediction is equally affected in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder

Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) are diagnosed based on motor difficulties. However, they also exhibit difficulties in several other cognitive domains, including visuospatial processing, executive functioning and attention. One account of the difficulties seen in DCD proposes an impairment in internal forward modelling, i.e., the ability to (i) detect regularities of a repetitive perceptual or motor pattern, (ii) predict future outcomes of motor actions, and (iii) adapt behaviour accordingly. Using electroencephalographic recordings, the present study aimed to delineate these different aspects of internal forward modelling across several domains. To this end, 24 children with DCD and 23 typically-developing children (aged 7-10 years) completed a serial prediction task in the visual, temporal, spatial and motor domains. This task required them to learn short sequences and to indicate whether a sequence was disrupted towards its end. Analyses revealed that, across all domains, children with DCD showed poorer discrimination between intact and disrupted sequences, accompanied by a delayed late parietal positivity elicited by disrupted sequences. These results indicate an impairment in explicit sequence discrimination in DCD across motor and cognitive domains. However, there is no evidence for an impairment in implicit performance on the motor task in DCD. These results suggest an impairment of the updating of an internal forward model in DCD resulting in a blurred representation of that model and consequently in a reduced ability to detect regularities in the environment (e.g., sequences). Such a detailed understanding of internal forward modelling in DCD could help to explain the wide range of co-occurring difficulties experienced by those with a diagnosis of DCD.

neuroscience↗