One of the primary ways we learn a new skill is through our teachers providing feedback in the form encouragement or criticism. This feedback is very valuable to learning and is meant to incentivize the learner to improve their upcoming performance. But are there some types of feedback that can hinder to skill learning? Recently, researchers have focused on how reward and punishment affect skill learning and retention. These studies demonstrate that punishment feedback enables faster learning but diminishes task preservation. Whereas reward feedback, promotes both learning and retention (1). Additionally, reward and punishment feedback activate different areas of the brain (2). Collectively, these studies suggest reward and punishment have distinguished effects behavior and our brains. However one question still remains: How are these types of feedback actually changing our brain during the process of learning and retention? Currently, no study has looked at how reward and punishment affect the moment to moment processes of the brain after receiving the feedback.
In our lab we sought to answer this question by utilizing electroencephalography to monitor feedback event related potentials (ERPs), a distinct change in the neural activity associated with feedback, in human participants after they received a monetary reward, monetary punishment, or no feedback as they attempted to learn and retain a novel visuomotor rotation task. During the learning stage, we found that all groups learned the task at the same rate and there were no differences in the feedback ERP amplitude (strength of the electrical signal) across all groups. However, during retention testing, the punishment group failed retain the task and their feedback ERP amplitude decreased. Whereas reward and null maintained a similar performance and ERP amplitude throughout retention testing.
But what does this mean? Feedback ERPs have been associated with how our brains represent the motor task (3). We suggest that punishment interferes with the brain processes that are responsible for how our brain stores motor tasks by taking away resources used for learning and retention, to avoid the aversive outcomes. Thus punishment may not be suitable for creating long-term changes in learner’s performance.
So, if we ever find ourselves providing guidance for a new learner, let’s keep in mind how we provide direction not only affects how your pupil learns, but also affects how their brain prepares for the task in future.
1. Galea, J. M., Mallia, E., Rothwell, J., & Diedrichsen, J. (2015). The dissociable effects of punishment and reward on motor learning. Nature Neuroscience, 18, 597-602.
2. Steel, A., Silson, E. H., Stagg, C. J., & Baker, C. I. (2019). Reward and punishment differentially recruit cerebellum and medial temporal lobe to facilitate skill memory retention. Neuroimage, 189, 95-105.
3. Palidis, D. J., Cashaback, J. G., & Gribble, P. L. (2019). Neural signatures of reward and sensory error feedback processing in motor learning. Journal of Neurophysiology, 121, 1561-1574.
Christopher Hill
Health and Exercise Science
University of Mississippi
Though we come to realize more and more how similar we are to one another, there remain certain slight differences between sexes across the animal kingdom. In humans and other mammals like mice and monkeys, many studies have revealed a sex difference in spatial memory. Spatial memory is how you know where things are in relation to yourself and other things, whether they be objects, places, or other people, and the ability to use this information to navigate yourself wherever you want to go. It appears that while overall spatial memory performance is similar between sexes, males have an initial upper hand due to the use of more efficient strategies to acquire a new spatial memory. The reason for this difference seems to be the simple fact that male mammals use their spatial memory more than females, most often for seeking out females across their territory. This reflects a property of the brain that many refer to as “use it or lose it” but that might be more accurately put as “don’t need it, don’t develop it,” though not quite as catchy. In birds, this feature of spatial memory can be seen even more clearly. For example, brown-headed cowbirds are brood parasites such that the female seeks out suitable host nests in which to lay her eggs and then remembers the location of the nest until she is ready to lay. In these birds, females perform better on spatial memory tests than males, who do not participate in the nest seeking (1). In two other studies on birds, there were some slight differences in how males and females learned a new spatial memory but overall performance was the same (2, 3). However, there were many outside factors involved in these tasks that could have affected the birds’ ability to learn.
When we look into the world, we see geometry that tells us about the layout of our surroundings. People have spent a lot of time and effort researching how people perceive distance and scale. An important tool that is often used to this perception is virtual reality (VR). However, VR has its own limitations that affect people’s perceptions and actions. A common problem is distance compression. This problem causes people to perceive their surroundings to be closer to them than they actually are, essentially making the world look smaller. Most space perception research in VR has focused on this topic. However, we see more than just distances. We also see orientations or angular relationships between objects. Very little work has examined whether or not orientation perception is similarly affected by VR. The work that we talked about in our presentation was the first study to investigate this area.
Synthetic derivatives of cathinones often referred to as “bath salts” are obtained from psychoactive alkaloid Khat (Catha edulis). The prevalence of the consumption of cathinones has been growing alarmingly in the United States in the last decade with new structural analogs emerging globally each of which differs from the other.
A previous 
