Neuroscience
A neural basis of choking under pressure
In response to exceptionally large reward cues, animals can 'choke under pressure', and this corresponds to a collapse in the neural information about upcoming movements.
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.'
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Incentives can lead to underperformance when they are too high, a phenomenon known as 'choking under pressure'.
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Rhesus monkeys underperformed in a reaching task when a large 'jackpot' reward was at stake.
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There was a collapse in neural information about upcoming movements for jackpot rewards in the motor cortex.
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Neural planning signals became less distinguishable for different reach directions when a jackpot reward was available.
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Neural signals of reward and motor planning interact in the motor cortex, explaining the choking under pressure.
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.