Citation

Rozand V, Lebon F, Papaxanthis C, Lepers R. Neuroscience 2015; 297: 219-230.

Affiliation

Laboratoire INSERM U1093, Université de Bourgogne, Faculté des Sciences du Sport - UFR STAPS, BP 27877, 21078 Dijon Cedex, France.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, International Brain Research Organization, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.neuroscience.2015.03.066

PMID

25849613

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of mental fatigue on the duration of actual and imagined goal-directed arm movements involving speed-accuracy trade-off. Ten participants performed actual and imagined point-to-point arm movements as accurately and as fast as possible before and after a 90-min sustained cognitive task inducing mental fatigue, and before and after viewing a neutral control task (documentary movie) that did not induce mental fatigue. Target width and center-to-center target distance were varied, resulting in five different index of difficulty. Prior to mental fatigue, actual and imagined movement duration increased with the difficulty of the task, as predicted by Fitts' law. Mental fatigue task induced a 4.1 ± 0.7 % increase in actual movement duration and a 9.6 ± 1.1 % increase in imagined movement duration, independently of the index of difficulty. The trial-by-trial evolution of actual and imagined movement duration remained stable with mental fatigue. The control task did not induce any change in actual and imagined movement duration. The results suggested that movement was slowed in presence of mental fatigue, maybe due to proactive changes occurring during the preparatory state of the movement, to preserve task success.

Language: en