Motor cortex recordings show that performance choking under high-stakes conditions is driven by recruiting excessive motor units and overinvesting motor activity.
"And so choking turns out to be a recruitment of too many motor units. You basically you overinvest motor effort as opposed to staying chill and staying in the zone where you still might not bullseye... And subjects choke when the stakes go way up because they just overinvest too much motor activity." (said at 1:53:43)
The claim is based on a 2024 neurophysiology study in rhesus macaques (Smoulder et al., Neuron), which recorded motor cortex (MC) population activity during a reaching task under varying reward stakes. The authors found that large 'jackpot' rewards drove neural activity during motor preparation into and then beyond an optimal performance zone, explaining why performance drops under high stakes. However, the study was conducted in monkeys (not humans) and measured cortical neural preparatory population dynamics in the motor cortex, rather than the recruitment of peripheral 'motor units' (which refers to spinal motor neurons and muscle fibers).
- context: A neural basis of choking under pressure. (Neuron 2024)
"We found that increases in reward drive neural activity during movement preparation into, and then past, a zone of optimal performance. We conclude that neural signals of reward and motor preparation interact in the motor cortex (MC) in a manner that can explain why we choke under pressure." (abstract, results, passage verified)
pubmedfull study (doi)