Special issue: ReviewDo we have distinct systems for immediate and delayed actions? A selective review on the role of visual memory in action
Section snippets
A visual path with no memory? Evidence from neurophysiology, fMRI and TMS
The dorsal amnesia hypothesis assumes that visual representations in the dorsal stream are too transient to support memory-based actions. Both electrophysiological recordings from dorsal-stream neurons in non-human primates and fMRI studies on cortical areas situated in the dorsal stream can be consulted to address this question. The few non-human primate studies that have looked directly at the time-course of spiking activity in parietal regions associated with visually guided hand movements
Trapped in the present. How ventral-stream damage affects memory-based action
The conclusion that ventral stream damage impairs the ability to perform memory-based visuomotor acts received initial support from a classic study conducted by Goodale, Jakobson, et al. (1994a). In this study, DF was first asked to grasp target objects placed in front of her. Her ability to adjust her hand-opening to the objects' size seemed normal. Next, she was again asked to grasp objects but this time vision of the target object was removed as well as the object itself. After a delay of
Stuck in the past: how dorsal-stream damage affects memory-based action
Optic ataxia is a comparatively rare but very interesting and to some extent puzzling disorder. First described by Bálint (1909) it forms part of the so-called Balint-Holmes syndrome which is sometimes observed in the context of neuronal damage to posterior portions of the parietal cortex (Goethals & Santens, 2001). This type of neuronal damage can occur as a result of stroke but also in the course of neurodegenerative disorders such as posterior cortical atrophy, a form of dementia. Patients
Dorsal amnesia: how reliance on memory impairs actions in neurologically intact humans
An interesting consequence of the formulation of the perception-action model (Goodale and Milner, 1992, Milner and Goodale, 1995, Milner and Goodale, 2006) was an increased arousal of interest in the investigation of the relationship between visual factors and manual control, a topic that had been until then largely neglected by psychologists (see, Rosenbaum, 2005). Interestingly, however, it is often ignored that the question of how humans use visual information to control voluntary movements
Visual illusions, actions and delays
Evidence for the suggestion that the altered movement kinematics after delay are indeed a result of degraded visual information comes from studies investigating the effect of visual illusion on reaching and grasping kinematics in different vision conditions (e.g., Gentilucci et al., 1996, Hu and Goodale, 2000, Westwood and Goodale, 2003, Westwood et al., 2000, Westwood et al., 2001b). In short, the rationale of these studies is that when vision is available during the movement (or at least
The role of allocentric and egocentric cues for the visual guidance of actions
The underlying assumption of why visual illusions affect movements performed after delay but not in real time is that, according to the perception-action model, the long-lasting information represented within the ventral stream maintains information in an allocentric frame of reference (taking the environmental context into account). In contrast, the real-time information maintained in the dorsal stream is supposed to be represented in an egocentric frame of reference (relative to the
Summary and conclusions
In this article we focused on one specific aspect of the perception-action model, its claim of the transient nature of the visual information processed in the dorsal stream. This claim, which we called the dorsal amnesia hypothesis, led to some interesting predictions and findings and received support from a wide range of different scientific domains. In this review, we critically re-examined the evidence from those different domains. We come to the conclusion that neither the findings from
Acknowledgements
Thomas Schenk was supported by grants from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG, grant no's: DFG-SCHE 735/2-1 and DFG-SCHE 735/3-1).
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Cited by (16)
Asymmetric effects of graspable distractor disks on motor preparation of successive grasps: A behavioural and event-related potential (ERP) study
2020, International Journal of PsychophysiologyCitation Excerpt :Instead, the dorsal stream processes information relevant for the online control of goal-directed actions (“vision-for-action”). Critically for the purposes of the current paper, vision-for-action is assumed to code “here-and-now” relationships between an object and the action's effector, disregarding how the object relates to its context, especially in time (i.e., “dorsal amnesia”; Schenk and Hesse, 2018). In this paper, we challenged real time motor control investigating whether motor preparation for grasping an object is affected by a previously elicited motor representation for grasping a different object.
Action preparation in grasping reveals generalization of precision between implicit and explicit motor processes
2020, NeuropsychologiaCitation Excerpt :Thus, in the TVSH vision-for-action is mainly conceived as a system for real-time control (Westwood and Goodale, 2003) and should be unaffected by the temporal context preceding a movement. In a comprehensive recent review, Schenk and Hesse (2018) examined the empirical support for such a strong prediction, which they called the “dorsal amnesia” hypothesis, and concluded that dorsal amnesia is not generally supported. We take this as a call for further research on the nature of potential temporal interactions (or lack thereof) within specific motor tasks that may relate to specialized cortical networks (see Schenk et al., 2011).
Spatial updating of allocentric landmark information in real-time and memory-guided reaching
2020, CortexCitation Excerpt :This deviation should occur after the eye blink, i.e., after the landmark information has been updated. As memory delay can lead to an increased use of allocentric information for visuomotor control (Krigolson & Heath, 2004; Obhi & Goodale, 2005), and rather brief delays (500 msec) can be sufficient to influence movement kinematics (Heath & Binsted, 2007; Schenk & Hesse, 2018), we expect a larger deviation of reaching endpoints in the landmark shift direction in the memory-guided delay than the memory-guided no-delay than the online condition. We report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions, all inclusion/exclusion criteria, whether inclusion/exclusion criteria were established prior to data analysis, all manipulations, and all measures used in the study.
Where are we now with ‘What’ and ‘How’?
2018, CortexManual action re-planning interferes with the maintenance process of working memory: an ERP investigation
2023, Psychological Research