Abstract
It has long been postulated that cognitive and motor functions are functionally intertwined. While the idea received convincing support from neuroimaging studies providing evidence that motor and cognitive processes draw on common neural mechanisms and resources, findings from behavioral studies are rather inconsistent. The purpose of the present study was to identify and verify key factors that act on the link between cognitive and motor functions. Specifically we investigated whether it is possible to predict motor skills from cognitive functions. While our results support the idea that motor and cognitive functions are functionally intertwined and different motor skills entail distinct cognitive functions, our data also strongly suggest that the impact of cognitive control processes on motor skill proficiency depends on performance variability, i.e. on how challenging a motor task is. Based on these findings, we presume that motor skills activate specific cognitive control processes on two levels: basic processes that are solely related to the type of the motor task, and variability-driven processes that come into play when performance variability is high. For practitioners, these findings call for specific and challenging motor training interventions to directly tap into the to-be-improved cognitive skills and to involve a maximum of cognitive processes.
Highlights
While the idea that motor skill proficiency and cognitive capacities are connected was first put forward in the early years of the 20th century[1], it continues to be an area of great focus by researchers to this day[2,3,4,5,6]
We sought to isolate main cognitive control processes associated with two omnipresent everyday life motor skills that differed in their level of control
The purpose of the present study was to (1) isolate main cognitive control processes associated with two omnipresent everyday life motor skills that differed in their level of control and (2) explore the influence of performance variability on the relation between specific cognitive control processes and motor functioning
Summary
While the idea that motor skill proficiency and cognitive capacities are connected was first put forward in the early years of the 20th century[1], it continues to be an area of great focus by researchers to this day[2,3,4,5,6]. Goal-directed motor action in certain situations (e.g., walking down an empty street), when a task requires one to concentrate on a specific movement feature or the whole movement to successfully perform the motor task (e.g., when learning a new task, when confronted with novel or changing situational constraints, or when performing a difficult/complex task) the individual engages cognitive control processes to assist in the successful performance of the task[3,20,21,22] These findings are supported by neuroimaging studies demonstrating that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation is positively related to performance on novel tasks and negatively related to performance on well-learned tasks[21,22,23,24], and that only novel and challenging motor tasks activate the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the neocerebellum – areas known to be critical for motor and executive functioning[3,4,6,7]. We did this by manipulating the level of difficulty of the single-leg balance control task[31], as difficulty level can be adjusted (e.g. by using a balance pad, or performing the task with eyes closed) and the primary outcome measure of the single-leg balance control task (i.e., the mean sway) is highly sensitive to minimal change (compared to the manual dexterity task)[32]
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