A neural basis of choking under pressure
TL;DR
Imagine your brain is a coach drawing a play on a whiteboard for your muscles. For a normal task, the coach draws a clear, simple diagram, and your muscles know exactly what to do. But when a massive, 'championship-level' prize is on the line, the coach gets so excited about the reward that they start scribbling frantically all over the board. The play becomes a messy, confusing jumble. This study found that something similar happens in the motor cortex—the brain's 'whiteboard.' The overwhelming signal of a 'jackpot' reward creates so much neural noise that the specific plan for a movement gets lost, leading to a clumsy error or 'choking.'
Incentives tend to drive improvements in performance. But when incentives get too high, we can “choke under pressure” and underperform when it matters most. What neural processes might lead to choking under pressure? We studied Rhesus monkeys performing a challenging reaching task in which they underperform when an unusually large “jackpot” reward is at stake. We observed a collapse in neural information about upcoming movements for jackpot rewards: in the motor cortex, neural planning signals became less distinguishable for different reach directions when a jackpot reward was made available. We conclude that neural signals of reward and motor planning interact in the motor cortex in a manner that can explain why we choke under pressure.
- 1Incentives can lead to underperformance when they are too high, a phenomenon known as 'choking under pressure'.
- 2Rhesus monkeys underperformed in a reaching task when a large 'jackpot' reward was at stake.
- 3There was a collapse in neural information about upcoming movements for jackpot rewards in the motor cortex.
- 4Neural planning signals became less distinguishable for different reach directions when a jackpot reward was available.
- 5Neural signals of reward and motor planning interact in the motor cortex, explaining the choking under pressure.
Single-minus gluon tree amplitudes are nonzero
Imagine tiny particles called gluons are like spinning tops. Their spin can be in one of two directions, which physicists call 'plus' or 'minus'. For decades, the rulebook seemed to say that you could never have a situation where just one gluon was spinning 'minus' and all the others were spinning 'plus' — that outcome was thought to be zero. This paper found a loophole. Under very specific, purely mathematical conditions that don't exist in our physical reality but are useful for calculations, this interaction can happen. The researchers wrote down the exact recipe for it, fixing a small but important detail in our fundamental rulebook for how the universe works.
Sub-part-per-trillion test of the Standard Model with atomic hydrogen
Scientists made an incredibly precise measurement of light emitted by hydrogen atoms that tested one of physics' most fundamental theories - the Standard Model - to an accuracy of 0.7 parts per trillion. This measurement also resolved a long-standing disagreement about the size of protons by confirming the smaller value found in previous experiments with exotic atoms.
Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi
Imagine finding a spray-painted handprint on a cave wall. Over thousands of years, a thin, glassy layer of minerals, like limescale in a kettle, grew on top of it. Scientists used a high-tech laser to analyze that mineral layer. By measuring the natural radioactive decay of elements within it, they figured out the layer is about 71,600 years old. Since the handprint is underneath that layer, it must be at least that old, with the most conservative estimate being 67,800 years. This makes it one of the oldest pieces of art ever found and proves that the early humans who lived on this Indonesian island, who had to cross the ocean to get there, were creating symbolic art.
An interstellar energetic and non-aqueous pathway to peptide formation
Imagine you have a box of LEGO bricks, which are like the basic molecules of life called amino acids. To build anything, you need to snap them together. Scientists used to think you needed a puddle of liquid water to make the bricks 'click'. This experiment is like discovering you can snap the LEGOs together inside a freezer. The researchers took the simplest amino acid, froze it onto a dust grain like you'd find in space, and zapped it with energy that mimics cosmic radiation. They found that the amino acids linked up to form a two-brick chain, the first step towards building a protein. This means the essential first chains for life could be forming all over space and delivered to new planets by comets and asteroids.