[Seminar] "Interaction between action and perception" by Prof. Nobuhiro Hagura

Speaker: Prof. Nobuhiro Hagura
Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet), National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT)
Graduate School of Frontiers Biosciences, Osaka University

Title: Interaction between action and perception. 

Abstract:

In a penalty shootout of a football (soccer) game, a player might confidently kick the ball toward the right corner after noticing that the goalkeeper is moving in the opposite direction. Alternatively, they might make the same kick while being uncertain about the goalkeeper’s movement. Since both actions appear identical, we tend to assume that the same motor memory (i.e., the motor program for kicking the ball to the right) is retrieved and executed in both cases, regardless of the level of certainty in the preceding decision.
Indeed, previous research on perceptual decision-making has treated uncertainty as a factor that modulates the evidence accumulation process for decisions, implicitly assuming that once the evidence level reaches a threshold, an identical motor program is triggered. However, it seems reasonable to expect that learning or performing an action might differ based on decision uncertainty, as subjective uncertainty can be linked to key behavioral factors such as the expected outcome of an action or the possibility of revising a motor plan.
Here, through a series of behavioral experiments, we show that actions following certain and uncertain decisions are encoded in memory differently. In other words, we demonstrate that internal decision processes—without the involvement of any overt bodily movements—can serve as contextual cues for motor memory. This finding sharply contrasts with the dominant view in the field, which posits that contextual cues for motor memory primarily consist of factors directly relevant to motor execution, such as the visual appearance of an object, the type or location of a reach target, and the posture or state of other body parts during action. Encoding motor memories based on decision context may enhance the robustness of motor control under varying neural activity states induced by different cognitive conditions. This also suggests that cognitive variables, such as the decision-making process, may not be as independent from motor control as previously thought.  

URL: https://www2.nict.go.jp/bnc/nhagura/index-en.html

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