ScienceDaily: Too much motivation affects our decision-making

“In a state of great thirst -- therefore of great motivation -- rodents performed poorly. They licked the spout indiscriminately, without distinguishing between the whiskers stimulated. In contrast, in a state of moderate thirst, the choice of their action became optimal. They mainly licked the spout when whisker A was stimulated. Finally, when they were not very thirsty, their performance in the task dropped again.

By observing the activity of neuronal populations responsible for perceptual decision-making in these mice, the researchers discovered that neurons in these circuits were flooded with electrical signals when mice were hyper-motivated. Conversely, in a state of low-motivation, the signals were too weak. ''Hyper-motivation leads to strong stimulation of cortical neurons, which causes a loss of precision in the perception of tactile stimuli,'' says Giulio Matteucci, a Postdoctoral Fellow in Sami El-Boustani's laboratory and the study's first author.

In contrast, in the low-motivation state, the accuracy of the sensory information was recovered, but the strength of the signal was too low for it to be transferred correctly. As a result, the perception of the stimuli was also impaired.``

Some Insights From This Article

• The Yerkes-Dodson Law of psychology states that performance of a certain task is often done most optimally when arousal is at medium, not too high, not too low. This “Goldilocks” amount of motivation was recently studied with mice and behavior circuits.

• Neurologically it was found that hyper-motivation led to strong stimulation of neurons but loss of precision. This may pertain to the idea of “hyperstimulation” when you are excited and motivated you may be prone to more little errors and mistakes.

• The same follows with low-motivation states. In this sense there isn’t enough stimulation to properly capture information that’s being perceived.

Do you struggle with low or high motivation at times?

Full article is here!

#Motivation #Psychology #Decision-Making