Biology subjects

Maurer, H.

Publications and source records attributed to Maurer, H..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

The Earlier You Know, the Smoother You Act

Intercepting a moving object with our hands requires that the moving object and the hand come into contact at some point along the objects trajectory. Hand movement must, therefore, be planned in advance so that the hand reaches a chosen spatial location along this trajectory at the correct moment in time. To enable such anticipatory behavior, the objects trajectory must be predicted based on sensory information collected before movement planning is concluded. Early completion of planning would allow for a smooth and economical movement; however, it also requires sufficiently accurate information about the objects movement to be available earlier. We investigate interception in the context of a complex, naturalistic motor task, toss juggling, to understand the extent to which proprioceptive and tactile information influence anticipatory movements of the catching hand. In our study, we compared solo juggling, where the efferent, tactile and proprioceptive information from the throwing hand is available during catch planning, with dyadic juggling, a functionally "deafferented" condition where no such information is available because the ball has been thrown by another person. Our results indicate that when internal and tactile information from the toss is absent, anticipatory behavior is greatly reduced. Experienced jugglers seem to rely more strongly on internal information than vision, allowing earlier planning and lower target uncertainty. In the dyadic condition, when internal information is absent, trajectory planning is delayed, leading to greater target uncertainty.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

Dissociation of movement and outcome representations in metacognition of agency

We studied the role of movement and outcome information in forming metacognitive representations of agency. Participants completed a goal-oriented task, a virtual version of a ball-throwing game. In two conditions, we manipulated either the visual representation of the throwing movement or its distal outcome (the resulting ball flight/trajectory). We measured participants accuracy in a discrimination agency task, as well as confidence in their responses and tested for differences in the electrophysiological (EEG) signal using linear mixed effect models. We found no mean differences between participants metacognitive efficiency between conditions, but we also found that metacognitive sensitivity did not correlate between the two conditions, suggesting a dissociation in their underlying mechanisms. Furthermore, exploratory analyses pointed toward a difference in the EEG signal between the two conditions. Taken together, our results suggest that while movement and outcome information contribute equally to participants sense of agency, they may do so through distinct underlying processes.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Motor outcomes congruent with intentions may sharpen metacognitive representations

We can monitor our intentional movements, in order to describe how we move our bodies. But it is unclear which information this metacognitive monitoring relies on. For example, when throwing a ball to hit a target, we might use the visual information about how the ball flew to metacognitively assess our performance. Alternatively, we might disregard the ball trajectory -- given that it is not directly relevant to our goal -- and metacognitively assess our performance based solely on whether we reached the goal of hitting the target. In two experiments we aimed to distinguish between these two alternatives and asked whether the distal outcome of a goal-directed action (hitting or missing a target) informs the metacognitive representations of our own movements. Participants performed a semi-virtual task where they moved their arm to throw a virtual ball at a target. After each throw, participants discriminated which of two ball trajectories displayed on the screen corresponded to the flight path of their throw and then rated their confidence in this decision. The task included two conditions that differed on whether the distal outcome of the two trajectories shown matched (congruent) or differed (incongruent). Participants were significantly more accurate in discriminating between the two trajectories, and responded faster in the incongruent condition and, accordingly, were significantly more confident on these trials. Crucially, we found significant differences in metacognitive performance (measured as meta-d/d) between the two conditions only on successful trials, where the virtual ball had hit the target. These results indicate that participants successfully incorporated information about the outcome of the movement into both their discrimination and confidence responses. However, information about the outcome selectively sharpened the precision of confidence ratings only when the outcome of their throw matched their intention. We argue that these findings underline the separation between the different levels of information that may contribute to body monitoring, and we provide evidence that intentions might play a central role in metacognitive motor representations. HighlightsO_LIParticipants threw a virtual ball to hit a target C_LIO_LIFollowing their throw participants selected between two plausible trajectories C_LIO_LIOn half the trials, the two alternative trajectories differed in their distal outcome. C_LIO_LIDiscrimination and confidence were higher in trials with different outcome. C_LIO_LIMetacognitive performance was best in hit trials when the alternative missed. C_LI

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2021

Can Stephen Curry really know? - Conscious access to outcome prediction of motor actions

The NBA player Stephen Curry has a habit of turning away from the basket right after taking three-point shots, presumably because he can predict the success of his shot. For such a consciously accessible prediction to be possible, Stephen Curry needs access to internal processes of outcome prediction and valuation. Computational simulations and empirical data suggest that the quality of internal prediction processes is related to motor expertise. Whether the results of internal predictions can reliably be consciously accessed is less clear. In the current study, 30 participants each practiced a virtual goal-oriented throwing task for 1000 trials. Every second trial, they were required to verbally predict the success of the current throw. Results showed that on average, conscious prediction accuracy was above an individually computed chance level, taking into account individual success rates and response strategies. Furthermore, prediction accuracy was related to throwing performance. Participants with better performance predicted the success of their throws more accurately than participants with poorer performance. Moreover, for the poorer performing individuals, movement execution was negatively affected by the verbalized predictions required, and they did not show variation in speech characteristics (response latency) between correct and incorrect predictions. This indicates reduced quality of conscious access to internal processes of outcome prediction.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Measuring Metacognition of Direct and Indirect Parameters of Voluntary Movement

We can make exquisitely precise movements without the apparent need for conscious monitoring. But can we monitor the low-level movement parameters when prompted? And what are the mechanisms that allow us to monitor our movements? To answer these questions, we designed a semi-virtual ball throwing task. On each trial, participants first threw a virtual ball by moving their arm (with or without visual feedback, or replayed from a previous trial) and then made a two-alternative forced choice on the resulting ball trajectory. They then rated their confidence in their decision. We measured metacognitive efficiency using meta-d/d and compared it between different informational domains of the first-order task (motor, visuomotor or visual information alone), as well as between two different versions of the task based on different parameters of the movement: proximal (position of the arm) or distal (resulting trajectory of the ball thrown). We found that participants were able to monitor their performance based on distal motor information as well as when proximal information was available. Their metacognitive efficiency was also equally high in conditions with different sources of information available. The analysis of correlations across participants revealed an unexpected result: while metacognitive efficiency correlated between informational domains (which would indicate domain-generality of metacognition), it did not correlate across the different parameters of movement. We discuss possible sources of this discrepancy and argue that specific first-order task demands may play a crucial role in our metacognitive ability and should be considered when making inferences about domain-generality based on correlations.

neuroscience↗