Reward Pays the Cost of Noise Reduction in Motor and Cognitive Control.

ABSTRACT: Speed-accuracy trade-off is an intensively studied law governing almost all behavioral tasks across species. Here we show that motivation by reward breaks this law, by simultaneously invigorating movement and improving response precision. We devised a model to explain this paradoxical effect of reward by considering a new factor: the cost of control. Exerting control to improve response precision might itself come at a cost--a cost to attenuate a proportion of intrinsic neural noise. Applying a noise-reduction cost to optimal motor control predicted that reward can increase both velocity and accuracy. Similarly, application to decision-making predicted that reward reduces reaction times and errors in cognitive control. We used a novel saccadic distraction task to quantify the speed and acc

SUBMITTER: Manohar SG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4557747 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature