Abstract
Manual aiming movements can be amended during their execution. Recent evidence suggests that error detection and correction are based on automatic and even reflexive processing of afferent information. In this study, we wanted to determine whether these processes are affected by the occurrence of successive events requiring adjustments of the originally planned movement. To reach our goal, we used a video-aiming task. For a small proportion of the trials, the cursor moved by the participant was translated laterally by 15 mm (cursor jump) soon after movement initiation. For some of the cursor-jump trials, a second cursor jump occurred 100 ms after the first one and canceled or doubled the initial cursor translation. Results showed that participants were able to cancel or double the size of the correction in response to the second cursor jump. More importantly, in double-jump trials, the correction latency for the first and second cursor jumps did not differ from that of single-jump trials. Moreover, the correction for the second cursor jump blended seamlessly with the correction for the first cursor jump. These observations suggest that the processes leading of a correction for a cursor jump do not interfere with incoming visual information.
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Notes
It should be remembered that the procedure use to define movement time during data acquisition differed from that used during data analysis, which explains why the movement times reported above appear longer than the upper limit of the target movement time bandwidth.
Gordon et al. (1994) showed that movements initiated from a starting position located along one’s midline had a larger acceleration when aimed to the right than they did when aimed to the left of the starting position because of a larger inertial resistance in the latter (due to a larger involvement of the shoulder) than in the former direction (see also Carey and Otto-de Haart 2001; Mackrous and Proteau 2007 for a similar observation). This difference in inertial resistance is usually compensated by an increase in movement time in the direction of larger inertia (Gordon et al. 1994; Mackrous and Proteau 2007). Conversely, it could be that more accurate and faster movements are made when the position of the target is processed, at least initially, in the same hemisphere as the motor and sensory information of the reaching hand, because of more efficient within- than between-hemisphere visuomotor transmission of target information and/or visual feedback from the hand.
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This study was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
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Brière, J., Proteau, L. Automatic movement error detection and correction processes in reaching movements. Exp Brain Res 208, 39–50 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-010-2458-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-010-2458-1