Effect of mental fatigue on speed-accuracy trade-off.

Fiche publication


Date publication

juin 2015

Journal

Neuroscience

Auteurs

Membres identifiés du Cancéropôle Est :
Pr LEPERS Romuald, Pr PAPAXANTHIS Charalambos


Tous les auteurs :
Rozand V, Lebon F, Papaxanthis C, Lepers R

Résumé

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of mental fatigue on the duration of actual and imagined goal-directed arm movements involving speed-accuracy trade-off. Ten participants performed actual and imagined point-to-point arm movements as accurately and as fast as possible, before and after a 90-min sustained cognitive task inducing mental fatigue, and before and after viewing a neutral control task (documentary movie) that did not induce mental fatigue. Target width and center-to-center target distance were varied, resulting in five different indexes of difficulty. Prior to mental fatigue, actual and imagined movement duration increased with the difficulty of the task, as predicted by Fitts' law. Mental fatigue task induced a 4.1±0.7% increase in actual movement duration and a 9.6±1.1% increase in imagined movement duration, independently of the index of difficulty. The trial-by-trial evolution of actual and imagined movement duration remained stable with mental fatigue. The control task did not induce any change in actual and imagined movement duration. The results suggested that movement was slowed in the presence of mental fatigue, maybe due to proactive changes occurring during the preparatory state of the movement, to preserve task success.

Mots clés

Adult, Analysis of Variance, Arm, innervation, Electromyography, Evoked Potentials, Motor, physiology, Humans, Imagination, Male, Mental Fatigue, physiopathology, Movement, physiology, Neuropsychological Tests, Psychological Tests, Psychomotor Performance, physiology, Reaction Time, physiology, Statistics, Nonparametric, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Young Adult

Référence

Neuroscience. 2015 Jun;297:219-30