From Motivation to Action: Action Cost Better Predicts Changes in Premovement Beta-Band Activity than Speed

Abstract

Although premovement beta-band event-related desynchronization (β-ERD; 13–30 Hz) from sensorimotor regions is modulated by movement speed, current evidence does not support a strict monotonic association between the two. Given that β-ERD is thought to increase information encoding capacity, we tested the hypothesis that it might be related to the expected neurocomputational cost of movement, here referred to as action cost. Critically, action cost is greater both for slow and fast movements compared with a medium or “preferred” speed. Thirty-one right-handed participants performed a speed-controlled reaching task while recording their EEG. Results revealed potent modulations of beta power as a function of speed, with β-ERD being significantly greater both for movements performed at high and low speeds compared with medium speed. Interestingly, medium-speed movements were more often chosen by participants than low-speed and high-speed movements, suggesting that they were evaluated as less costly. In line with this, modeling of action cost revealed a pattern of modulation across speed conditions that strikingly resembled the one found for β-ERD. Indeed, linear mixed models showed that estimated action cost predicted variations of β-ERD significantly better than speed. This relationship with action cost was specific to beta power, as it was not found when averaging activity in the mu band (8–12 Hz) and gamma band (31–49 Hz) bands. These results demonstrate that increasing β-ERD may not merely speed up movements, but instead facilitate the preparation of high-speed and low-speed movements through the allocation of additional neural resources, thereby enabling flexible motor control.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTHeightened beta activity has been associated with movement slowing in Parkinson's disease, and modulations of beta activity are commonly used to decode movement parameters in brain–computer interfaces. Here we show that premovement beta activity is better explained by the neurocomputational cost of the action rather than its speed. Instead of being interpreted as a mere reflection of changes in movement speed, premovement changes in beta activity might therefore be used to infer the amount of neural resources that are allocated for motor planning.