For the first time, scientists have uncovered a set of neurons that misfire when the stakes are at their highest, sending poorer signals to the body that affects our actions in high-stakes situations.

In a first, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh have discovered that abnormal neural activity in the motor cortex of the brain – the area responsible for sending signals to direct how the body moves – increases when the reward payoff is greatest.

"By looking at the activity of populations of neurons in the motor cortex, we found a signature of choking under pressure, that at the precision of 100s of milliseconds, was indicative of whether or not a subject would fail in an upcoming trial," said the study's first author Adam Smoulder, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon. "We found that rewards interact with target preparation signals to drive neural activity toward a region associated with improved reach execution, and then, at the highest rewards, spread away from this region."

Homing in on motor control neurons in Rhesus monkeys, who had been trained to undertake challenging tasks in order to receive rewards of varying value, the researchers found that when there was a big 'win' promised, the animals underperformed when the pressure was on.

They analyzed the activity of hundreds of neurons involved in movement preparation as they undertook these challenging tasks in which the animals knew there was a large reward if they did well. The neurons fired as normal up to a certain point, but glitched when it came to completing a task for a 'jackpot' reward.

"So, it seems that increasing motivation by offering larger rewards can improve the discriminability of the neural signals, but only up to a point," he added. "Beyond that point, we actually see a collapse in neural information, and that's tightly correlated with when the animals choke under pressure."