New work by Dr. Sanjay Manohar and Professor Masud Husain has shown how motivation by reward can improve both speed and accuracy of eye movements, apparently exceeding the limits of the speed-accuracy trade-off. In the article, the authors propose that there is a cost for reducing intrinsic neural noise. Optimizing this cost predicts both motor and cognitive performance. The cost of control may be increased in Parkinson’s disease, accounting for slower movements that are less sensitive to incentives.
The work is published in the journal Current Biology