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Carrot or stick in motor learning

Nature Neuroscience volume 18, pages 480–481 (2015)Cite this article

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A study shows that reward and punishment have distinct influences on motor adaptation. Punishing mistakes accelerates adaptation, whereas rewarding good behavior improves retention.

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Figure 1: Motor control is at the intersection of three fields: psychology, neuroscience and computational science.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dagmar Sternad is in the Departments of Biology, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Physics, and the Center for the Interdisciplinary Research on Complex Systems, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA,

    Dagmar Sternad

  2. and the Departments of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Konrad Paul Körding is in the Sensory Motor Performance Program, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA, and Physiology, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA.,

    Konrad Paul Körding

Authors
  1. Dagmar Sternad
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  2. Konrad Paul Körding
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Correspondence to Dagmar Sternad or Konrad Paul Körding.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Sternad, D., Körding, K. Carrot or stick in motor learning. Nat Neurosci 18, 480–481 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3978

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