Better Get Back to Work: A Role for Motor Beta Desynchronization in Incentive Motivation

Much research has been devoted to characterizing brain representations of reward and movement. However, the mechanisms allowing expected rewards to influence motor commands remain poorly understood. Unraveling such mechanisms is crucial to providing explanations of how behavior can be driven by goals, hence accounting for apathy cases in clinics. Here, we propose that the reduction of motor beta synchrony (MBS) before movement onset could participate in this incentive motivation process. To test this hypothesis, we recorded brain activity using magnetoencenphalography (MEG) while human participants were exerting physical effort to win monetary incentives. Knowing that the payoff was proportional to the time spent above a target force, subjects spontaneously took breaks when exhausted and resumed effort production when repleted. Behavioral data indicated that the rest periods were shorter when higher incentives were at stake. MEG data showed that the amplitude of MBS reduction correlated to both incentive level and rest duration. Moreover, the time of effort initiation could be predicted by MBS reduction measured at the beginning of rest periods. Incentive effects on MBS reduction and rest duration were also correlated across subjects. Finally, Bayesian comparison between possible causal models suggested that MBS reduction mediates the impact of incentive level on rest duration. We conclude that MBS reduction could represent a neural mechanism that speeds the initiation of effort production when the effort is more rewarded.