Behavioral and physiological correlates of kinetically tracking a chaotic target

PLoS One. 2020 Sep 18;15(9):e0239471. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0239471. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

Humans can innately track a moving target by anticipating its future position from a brief history of observations. While ballistic trajectories can be readily extrapolated, many natural and artificial systems are governed by more general nonlinear dynamics and, therefore, can produce highly irregular motion. Yet, relatively little is known regarding the behavioral and physiological underpinnings of prediction and tracking in the presence of chaos. Here, we investigated in lab settings whether participants could manually follow the orbit of a paradigmatic chaotic system, the Rössler equations, on the (x,y) plane under different settings of a control parameter, which determined the prominence of transients in the target position. Tracking accuracy was negatively related to the level of unpredictability and folding. Nevertheless, while participants initially reacted to the transients, they gradually learned to anticipate it. This was accompanied by a decrease in muscular co-contraction, alongside enhanced activity in the theta and beta EEG bands for the highest levels of chaoticity. Furthermore, greater phase synchronization of breathing was observed. Taken together, these findings point to the possible ability of the nervous system to implicitly learn topological regularities even in the context of highly irregular motion, reflecting in multiple observables at the physiological level.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Autonomic Nervous System / physiology
  • Biomechanical Phenomena / physiology
  • Electroencephalography
  • Electromyography
  • Hand Strength / physiology
  • Humans
  • Kinetics
  • Learning / physiology
  • Motion
  • Muscle Contraction / physiology
  • Nonlinear Dynamics*
  • Task Performance and Analysis*
  • Young Adult

Associated data

  • figshare/10.6084/m9.figshare.12253649

Grants and funding

A.T. and L.M. received funding from the World Research Hub Initiative (WRHI), Institute of Innovative Research (IIR), Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan. A.T. was partially supported by the JST PRESTO (Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology) grant JPMJPR18J5. A.T, N.Y. and Y.K. were partially supported by JST Mirai grant JPMJMI18C8. N.Y. was partially supported by the JST PRESTO grant JPMJPR17JA. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.