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Mental Effort and Information-Processing Costs Are Inversely Related to Global Brain Free Energy During Visual Categorization.

ABSTRACT: Mental effort is a neurocognitive process that reflects the controlled expenditure of psychological information-processing resources during perception, cognition, and action. There is a practical need to operationalize and measure mental effort in order to minimize detrimental effects of mental fatigue on real-world human performance. Previous research has identified several neurocognitive indices of mental effort, but these indices are indirect measures that are also sensitive to experimental demands or general factors such as sympathetic arousal. The present study investigated a potential direct neurocognitive index of mental effort based in theories where bounded rational decision makers (realized as embodied brains) are modeled as generalized thermodynamic systems. This index is called free energy, an information-theoretic system property of the brain that reflects the difference between the brain's current and predicted states. Theory predicts that task-related differences in a decision makers' free energy are inversely related to information-processing costs related to task decisions. The present study tested this prediction by quantifying global brain free energy from electroencephalographic (EEG) measures of human brain function. EEG signals were recorded while participants engaged in two visual categorization tasks in which categorization decisions resulted from the allocation of different levels of mental information processing resources. A novel method was developed to quantify brain free energy from machine learning classification of EEG trials. Participant information-processing resource costs were estimated via computational analysis of behavior, whereas the subjective expression of mental effort was estimated via participant ratings of mental workload. Following theoretical predictions, task-related differences in brain free energy negatively correlated with increased allocation of information-processing resource costs. These brain free energy differences were smaller for the visual categorization task that required a greater versus lesser allocation of information-processing resources. Ratings of mental workload were positively correlated with information-processing resource costs, and negatively correlated with global brain free energy differences, only for the categorization task requiring the larger amount of information-processing resource costs. These findings support theoretical thermodynamic approaches to decision making and provide the first empirical evidence of a relationship between mental effort, brain free energy, and neurocognitive information-processing.

SUBMITTER: Trujillo LT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6906157 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Mental Effort and Information-Processing Costs Are Inversely Related to Global Brain Free Energy During Visual Categorization.

Trujillo Logan T LT

Frontiers in neuroscience 20191205

<i>Mental effort</i> is a neurocognitive process that reflects the controlled expenditure of psychological information-processing resources during perception, cognition, and action. There is a practical need to operationalize and measure mental effort in order to minimize detrimental effects of mental fatigue on real-world human performance. Previous research has identified several neurocognitive indices of mental effort, but these indices are indirect measures that are also sensitive to experim ...[more]

PMID: 31866809

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Project description:Animate and inanimate objects differ in their intermediate visual features. For instance, animate objects tend to be more curvilinear compared to inanimate objects (e.g., Levin, Takarae, Miner, & Keil, 2001). Recently, it has been demonstrated that these differences in the intermediate visual features of animate and inanimate objects are sufficient for categorization: Human participants viewing synthesized images of animate and inanimate objects that differ largely in the amount of these visual features classify objects as animate/inanimate significantly above chance (Long, Stormer, & Alvarez, 2017). A remaining question, however, is whether the observed categorization is a consequence of top-down cognitive strategies (e.g., rectangular shapes are less likely to be animals) or a consequence of bottom-up processing of their intermediate visual features, per se, in the absence of top-down cognitive strategies. To address this issue, we repeated the classification experiment of Long et al. (2017) but, unlike Long et al. (2017), matched the synthesized images, on average, in the amount of image-based and perceived curvilinear and rectilinear information. Additionally, in our synthesized images, global shape information was not preserved, and the images appeared as texture patterns. These changes prevented participants from using top-down cognitive strategies to perform the task. During the experiment, participants were presented with these synthesized, texture-like animate and inanimate images and, on each trial, were required to classify them as either animate or inanimate with no feedback given. Participants were told that these synthesized images depicted abstract art patterns. We found that participants still classified the synthesized stimuli significantly above chance even though they were unaware of their classification performance. For both object categories, participants depended more on the curvilinear and less on the rectilinear, image-based information present in the stimuli for classification. Surprisingly, the stimuli most consistently classified as animate were the most dangerous animals in our sample of images. We conclude that bottom-up processing of intermediate features present in the visual input is sufficient for animate/inanimate object categorization and that these features may convey information associated with the affective content of the visual stimuli.

Dataset Information

Mental Effort and Information-Processing Costs Are Inversely Related to Global Brain Free Energy During Visual Categorization.

Publications

Mental Effort and Information-Processing Costs Are Inversely Related to Global Brain Free Energy During Visual Categorization.

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