The neurophysiology of continuous action monitoring

Saskia Wilken; Adriana Böttcher; Nico Adelhöfer; Markus Raab; Sven Hoffmann; Christian Beste

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.106939

The neurophysiology of continuous action monitoring

iScience. 2023 May 22;26(7):106939. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106939. eCollection 2023 Jul 21.

Authors

Saskia Wilken¹, Adriana Böttcher^{2

3}, Nico Adelhöfer^{2

4}, Markus Raab^{5

6}, Sven Hoffmann¹, Christian Beste^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ General Psychology: Judgment, Decision Making, and Action, Institute of Psychology, University of Hagen, Hagen, Germany.
² Cognitive Neurophysiology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
³ University Neuropsychology Center, Faculty of Medicine, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
⁴ Donders Institute of Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
⁵ Performance Psychology, Institute of Psychology, German Sport University Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
⁶ School of Applied Sciences, London South Bank University, London, UK.

Abstract

Monitoring actions is essential for goal-directed behavior. However, as opposed to short-lasting, and regularly reinstating monitoring functions, the neural processes underlying continuous action monitoring are poorly understood. We investigate this using a pursuit-tracking paradigm. We show that beta band activity likely maintains the sensorimotor program, while theta and alpha bands probably support attentional sampling and information gating, respectively. Alpha and beta band activity are most relevant during the initial tracking period, when sensorimotor calibrations are most intense. Theta band shifts from parietal to frontal cortices throughout tracking, likely reflecting a shift in the functional relevance from attentional sampling to action monitoring. This study shows that resource allocation mechanisms in prefrontal areas and stimulus-response mapping processes in the parietal cortex are crucial for adapting sensorimotor processes. It fills a knowledge gap in understanding the neural processes underlying action monitoring and suggests new directions for examining sensorimotor integration in more naturalistic experiments.

Keywords: Cognitive neuroscience; Sensory neuroscience.