title: Brain potentials related to voluntary hand tracking, motivation and attention.
abstract: While there are many behavioural studies available investigating human hand tracking performance, there are none that include recording of cerebral potentials. Sixteen subjects tracked a visual or a tactile target by moving a stylus with their right hand. They voluntarily started the stimulus, which moved for 1 s in a first random direction, then for 1's in another direction. The stimulus was given to the left field of vision or tactually to the left palm. Tracking was compared to no-tracking controls. The voluntary initiation was preceded by a Bereitschaftspotential (BP), the change in direction by a contingent negative variation (CNV). Both BP and CNV showed a characteristic right hemispheric parietooccipital (visual task) or centro-parietal asymmetry (tactile task) due to the attention paid to the expected stimulus event ("directed attention potential", DAP). While the DAP outlasted stimulus onset by 0.2 s, fronto-midline areas switched already to positivity 100 ms prior to stimulus onset and more than 300 ms prior to the change in direction. Large P300-like components were elicited by stimulus onset and change in direction.
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004594:Electrophysiology; D006225:Hand; D006801:Humans; D009042:Motivation / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors