Title: Uncertainty in decision-making and motor learning in anxiety

Speaker: Maria Herrojo Ruiz (Reader in Cognitive Neuroscience at the School of Mind, Body and Society, Goldsmiths, University of London)

Location: In Person & Online via Zoom

Abstract: From perception to decision-making and motor control, adaptive behaviour relies on the ability to estimate and represent multiple forms of uncertainty. Misestimation of uncertainty has been proposed to underlie psychiatric difficulties, including anxiety and depression, in line with predictive processing accounts that emphasise aberrant precision-weighting of prediction errors during learning.

In our work, we have tested these proposals in anxiety using a combination of EEG and MEG, computational modelling, and decision-making and motor learning paradigms. I will first present evidence supporting rhythmic formulations of predictive processing, showing dysregulated beta and gamma activity associated with precision-weighted prediction errors during decision-making in anxiety and bipolar disorder. I will then present convergent findings from reinforcement-based motor learning, demonstrating how sustained anxiety dampens learning from reward feedback and attenuates the regulation of exploratory motor variability that supports learning.

Finally, I will extend this framework to performance anxiety, presenting recent data from expert pianists showing that performance anxiety manifests as context-dependent biases in learning from reward and punishment, shaped primarily by task uncertainty and, to a lesser degree, by high-stakes conditions.

Together, these findings highlight a central role of uncertainty in shaping how anxiety modulates learning and performance across domains.