Understanding Brain Connectivity Patterns during Motor Performance under Social-Evaluative Competitive Pressure

Previous studies have shown that psychological arousal impacts motor performance during social-evaluative tasks by its influence on cortical dynamics, which can translate into motor performance enhancement. Although these findings have established critical links between performance under mental stress and elevated brain activity beyond that required for performance, there is still a need to further investigate brain connectivity during cognitive motor performance under such conditions. Here both electroencephalographic (EEG) and shooting performance were obtained in a shooting task under both performance-alone and competitive conditions. Network connectivity was assessed for the localized EEG sources. The results are consistent with those previously obtained and suggest elevated statistical dependencies and causal interactions between motor and non-motor areas during the competitive condition relative to performance-alone. Such network analysis provides a complementary approach to more traditional EEG derived metrics allowing for examining brain dynamics during cognitive motor performance under varying conditions of mental stress.