The point of no return in vetoing self-initiated movements

In humans, spontaneous movements are often preceded by early brain signals. One such signal is the readiness potential (RP) that gradually arises within the last second preceding a movement. An important question is whether people are able to cancel movements after the elicitation of such RPs, and i...

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Published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 113; no. 4; pp. 1080 - 1085
Main Authors Schultze-Kraft, Matthias, Birman, Daniel, Rusconi, Marco, Allefeld, Carsten, Görgen, Kai, Dähne, Sven, Blankertz, Benjamin, Haynes, John-Dylan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States National Academy of Sciences 26.01.2016
National Acad Sciences
SeriesFrom the Cover
Subjects
Adult
Biological Sciences
Brain
Brain-Computer Interfaces
Contingent Negative Variation - physiology
Electroencephalography
Electromyography
Female
Game theory
Humans
Interfaces
Male
Movement
brain–computer interface
free choice
readiness potential
veto
point of no return
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Summary:In humans, spontaneous movements are often preceded by early brain signals. One such signal is the readiness potential (RP) that gradually arises within the last second preceding a movement. An important question is whether people are able to cancel movements after the elicitation of such RPs, and if so until which point in time. Here, subjects played a game where they tried to press a button to earn points in a challenge with a brain–computer interface (BCI) that had been trained to detect their RPs in real time and to emit stop signals. Our data suggest that subjects can still veto a movement even after the onset of the RP. Cancellation of movements was possible if stop signals occurred earlier than 200 ms before movement onset, thus constituting a point of no return.
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Author contributions: J.-D.H. conceived the study; M.S.-K., D.B., M.R., B.B., and J.-D.H. designed the experiment; M.S.-K. and D.B. performed research; M.S.-K., D.B., M.R., C.A., K.G., S.D., B.B., and J.-D.H. contributed new analytic tools; M.S.-K. and B.B. adapted the BBCI toolbox for this experiment; M.S.-K. and D.B. analyzed data; M.S.-K., D.B., and J.-D.H. wrote the paper; and M.R. and B.B. contributed to writing the paper.
1M.S.-K. and D.B. contributed equally to this work.
Edited by William T. Newsome, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and approved November 4, 2015 (received for review July 10, 2015)
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1513569112