Kock Ruchella, Ceolini Enea, Groenewegen Lysanne, Ghosh Arko
Cognitive Psychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, the Netherlands.
Neuroimage Rep. 2023 Mar 15;3(2):100164. doi: 10.1016/j.ynirp.2023.100164. eCollection 2023 Jun.
The discrete behavioral events captured on the smartphone touchscreen may help unravel real-world neural processing. We find that neural signals (EEG) surrounding a touchscreen event show a distinctly contralateral motor preparation followed by visual processing, and the consolidation of information. We leveraged these events in conjunction with kinematic recordings of the thumb and an artificial neural network to separate highly similar movements according to whether they resulted in a smartphone touch (goal-directed) or not (non-goal-directed). Despite their kinematic similarity, the signatures of neural control of movement and the post-movement processing were substantially dampened for the non-goal-directed movements, and these movements uniquely evoked error-related signals. We speculate that these apparently unnecessary movements are common in the real world and although inconsequential the brain provides limited motor preparation and tracks the action outcome. The neural signals surrounding discrete smartphone events can enable the study of neural processes that are difficult to capture in conventional laboratory-based tasks.
智能手机触摸屏上捕捉到的离散行为事件可能有助于揭示现实世界中的神经处理过程。我们发现，触摸屏事件周围的神经信号（脑电图）显示出明显的对侧运动准备，随后是视觉处理以及信息整合。我们利用这些事件，结合拇指的运动学记录和人工神经网络，根据动作是否导致智能手机触摸（目标导向）将高度相似的动作区分开来。尽管这些动作在运动学上相似，但非目标导向动作的运动神经控制特征和运动后处理过程明显减弱，并且这些动作独特地诱发了与错误相关的信号。我们推测，这些看似不必要的动作在现实世界中很常见，尽管无关紧要，但大脑仍会进行有限的运动准备并追踪动作结果。离散智能手机事件周围的神经信号能够用于研究在传统实验室任务中难以捕捉的神经过程。
