scholarly journals Auditory Coding of Reaching Space

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Fehse ◽  
Gerd Schmitz ◽  
Daniela Hartwig ◽  
Shashank Ghai ◽  
Heike Brock ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Inertial Sensors ◽  
Target Position ◽  
Movement Control ◽  
Reaching Movements ◽  
Auditory Information ◽  
Movement Velocity ◽  
Movement Trajectories ◽  
Visual Movement ◽  
Spatial Dimensions ◽  
Based Instruction

Reaching movements are usually initiated by visual events and controlled visually and kinesthetically. Lately, studies have focused on the possible benefit of auditory information for localization tasks, and also for movement control. This explorative study aimed to investigate if it is possible to code reaching space purely by auditory information. Therefore, the precision of reaching movements to merely acoustically coded target positions was analyzed. We studied the efficacy of acoustically effect-based and of additional acoustically performance-based instruction and feedback and the role of visual movement control. Twenty-four participants executed reaching movements to merely acoustically presented, invisible target positions in three mutually perpendicular planes in front of them. Effector-endpoint trajectories were tracked using inertial sensors. Kinematic data regarding the three spatial dimensions and the movement velocity were sonified. Thus, acoustic instruction and real-time feedback of the movement trajectories and the target position of the hand were provided. The subjects were able to align their reaching movements to the merely acoustically instructed targets. Reaching space can be coded merely acoustically, additional visual movement control does not enhance reaching performance. On the basis of these results, a remarkable benefit of kinematic movement acoustics for the neuromotor rehabilitation of everyday motor skills can be assumed.

scholarly journals Rapid Online Changes of Mind during Value-based Action Decisions

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Martí-Marca ◽  
Gustavo Deco ◽  
Ignasi Cos
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Motor Planning ◽  
Target Position ◽  
Reasonable Doubt ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Movement Velocity ◽  
Movement Trajectories ◽  
Reward Delivery ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Benefit Cost

AbstractWhile the principles of decision-making are often expressed in terms of benefit-cost trade-off, reasonable doubt remains as to how the cognitive value and motor cost associated to several options may be computed across several brain areas, ultimately leading to a decision. Furthermore, does the assessment of non-chosen options continue after the decision has been made and the selected movement is already ongoing? Does the planning of several motor options depend on a unique parallel process or are there some elements within the sensorimotor loop requiring a sequential processing? Our hypothesis is that a change of available prospects at any point in time should dynamically adjust the desirability for each option, implying a fast reassessment of values and costs across prefrontal and motor cortical areas, even after an initial decision has been made and its associated response movement is ongoing. To test this, we performed a decision-making task in which human participants were instructed to select a reaching path trajectory from an origin to a wide rectangular target to gain the most reward. Reward delivery was contingent upon the distribution of value and upon precise target arrival. The original value distribution was altered during the ongoing movement in one third of the trials. Our results show that participants changed their movement trajectories towards the target position offering a better prospect, as presented by the second distribution. The changes of mind occurred more frequently for slow movements, had a duration in average inferior to the reaction time, and altered the initial timing and movement velocity. Although reward is the main factor guiding the selection of a specific movement in our experiment, our results indicate that the motor system was biased towards early changes of mind, given that the amplitude of the first acceleration and velocity peaks was significantly smaller in trials in which the participant switched target side and those in which they stuck to their original choice. Finally, the short latency of the recorded changes of mind strongly supports the hypothesis that, for the experimental conditions hereby considered, value considerations occur in parallel to motor planning.

The Role of Reafference in Recalibration of Limb Movement Control and Locomotion

1997 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 303-310
Author(s):  
James R. Lackner ◽  
Paul DiZio
Keyword(s):  
Movement Control ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
The Body ◽  
Head Movements ◽  
Reaching Movements ◽  
Optomotor Response ◽  
Coriolis Forces ◽  
Effects Of Rotation ◽  
Centripetal Forces

The reafference model has frequently been used to explain spatial constancy during eye and head movements. We have found that its basic concepts also form part of the information processing necessary for the control and recalibration of reaching movements. Reaching was studied in a novel force environment–a rotating room that creates centripetal forces of the type that could someday substitute for gravity in space flight, and Coriolis forces which are side effects of rotation. We found that inertial, noncontacting Coriolis forces deviate the path and endpoint of reaching movements, a finding that shows the inadequacy of equilibrium position models of movement control. Repeated movements in the rotating room quickly lead to normal movement patterns and to a failure to perceive the perturbing forces. The first movements made after rotation stops, without Coriolis forces present, show mirror-image deviations and evoke perception of a perturbing force even though none is present. These patterns of sensorimotor control and adaptation can largely be explained on the basis of comparisons of efference copy, reafferent muscle spindle, and cutaneous mechanoreceptor signals. We also describe experiments on human iocomotion using an apparatus similar to that which Mittelstaedt used to study the optomotor response of the Eristalis fly. These results show that the reafference principle relates as well to the perception of the forces acting on and exerted by the body during voluntary locomotion.

Behavioral Reference Frames for Planning Human Reaching Movements

2006 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 352-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine M. Beurze ◽  
Stan Van Pelt ◽  
W. Pieter Medendorp
Keyword(s):  
Reference Frame ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Reference Frames ◽  
Target Position ◽  
Movement Planning ◽  
Reaching Movements ◽  
Hand Position ◽  
Pointing Error ◽  
Movement Vector ◽  
Common Reference

At some stage in the process of a sensorimotor transformation for a reaching movement, information about the current position of the hand and information about the location of the target must be encoded in the same frame of reference to compute the hand-to-target difference vector. Two main hypotheses have been proposed regarding this reference frame: an eye-centered and a body-centered frame. Here we evaluated these hypotheses using the pointing errors that subjects made when planning and executing arm movements to memorized targets starting from various initial hand positions while keeping gaze fixed in various directions. One group of subjects ( n = 10) was tested without visual information about hand position during movement planning (unseen-hand condition); another group ( n = 8) was tested with hand and target position simultaneously visible before movement onset (seen-hand condition). We found that both initial hand position and gaze fixation direction had a significant effect on the magnitude and direction of the pointing error. Errors were significantly smaller in the seen-hand condition. For both conditions, though, a reference frame analysis showed that the errors arose at an eye- or hand-centered stage or both, but not at a body-centered stage. As a common reference frame is required to specify a movement vector, these results suggest that an eye-centered mechanism is involved in integrating target and hand position in programming reaching movements. We discuss how simple gain elements modulating the eye-centered target and hand-position signals can account for these results.

Coriolis-Force-Induced Trajectory and Endpoint Deviations in the Reaching Movements of Labyrinthine-Defective Subjects

2001 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 784-789 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul DiZio ◽  
James R. Lackner
Keyword(s):  
Equilibrium Point ◽  
Constant Velocity ◽  
Motor Planning ◽  
Movement Control ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
Reaching Movements ◽  
Slow Rotation ◽  
Body Rotation ◽  
Control Subjects ◽  
Movement Curvature

When reaching movements are made during passive constant velocity body rotation, inertial Coriolis accelerations are generated that displace both movement paths and endpoints in their direction. These findings directly contradict equilibrium point theories of movement control. However, it has been argued that these movement errors relate to subjects sensing their body rotation through continuing vestibular activity and making corrective movements. In the present study, we evaluated the reaching movements of five labyrinthine-defective subjects (lacking both semicircular canal and otolith function) who cannot sense passive body rotation in the dark and five age-matched, normal control subjects. Each pointed 40 times in complete darkness to the location of a just extinguished visual target before, during, and after constant velocity rotation at 10 rpm in the center of a fully enclosed slow rotation room. All subjects, including the normal controls, always felt completely stationary when making their movements. During rotation, both groups initially showed large deviations of their movement paths and endpoints in the direction of the transient Coriolis forces generated by their movements. With additional per-rotation movements, both groups showed complete adaptation of movement curvature (restoration of straight-line reaches) during rotation. The labyrinthine-defective subjects, however, failed to regain fully accurate movement endpoints after 40 reaches, unlike the control subjects who did so within 11 reaches. Postrotation, both groups' movements initially had mirror image curvatures to their initial per-rotation reaches; the endpoint aftereffects were significantly different from prerotation baseline for the control subjects but not for the labyrinthine-defective subjects reflecting the smaller amount of endpoint adaptation they achieved during rotation. The labyrinthine-defective subjects' movements had significantly lower peak velocity, higher peak elevation, lower terminal velocity, and a more vertical touchdown than those of the control subjects. Thus the way their reaches terminated denied them the somatosensory contact cues necessary for full endpoint adaptation. These findings fully contradict equilibrium point theories of movement control. They emphasize the importance of contact cues in adaptive movement control and indicate that movement errors generated by Coriolis perturbations of limb movements reveal characteristics of motor planning and adaptation in both healthy and clinical populations.

scholarly journals Group-based Motion Detection for Energy-Efficient Localisation

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 183-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raja Jurdak ◽  
Branislav Kusy ◽  
Alban Cotillon
Keyword(s):  
Motion Detection ◽  
Inertial Sensors ◽  
Target Position ◽  
High Energy ◽  
Mobile Node ◽  
Motion Sensors ◽  
Duty Cycling ◽  
Energy Profiles ◽  
Duty Cycles ◽  
Outdoor Localization

Long-term outdoor localization remains challenging due to the high energy profiles of GPS modules. Duty cycling the GPS module combined with inertial sensors can improve energy consumption. However, inertial sensors that are kept active all the time can also drain mobile node batteries. This paper proposes duty cycling strategies for inertial sensors to maintain a target position accuracy and node lifetime. We present a method for duty cycling motion sensors according to features of movement events, and evaluate its energy and accuracy profile for an empirical data trace of cattle movement. We further introduce the concept of group-based duty cycling, where nodes that cluster together can share the burden of motion detection to reduce their duty cycles. Our evaluation shows that both variants of motion sensor duty cycling yield up to 78% improvement in overall node power consumption, and that the group-based method yields an additional 20% power reduction during periods of low mobility.

Task Effects on Three-Dimensional Dynamic Postures during Seated Reaching Movements: An Investigative Scheme and Illustration

1997 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 659-671 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xudong Zhang ◽  
Don B. Chaffin
Keyword(s):  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Movement Control ◽  
Reaching Movements ◽  
Motion Direction ◽  
Hand Motion ◽  
Movement Data ◽  
Task Effects ◽  
Posture Prediction ◽  
Distinctive Difference ◽  
The Relationship

In this paper we describe a new scheme for empirically investigating the effects of task factors on three-dimensional (3D) dynamic postures during seated reaching movements. The scheme relies on an underlying model that integrates two statistical procedures: (a) a regression description of the relationship between the time-varying hand location and postural angles to characterize the movement data and (b) a series of analyses of variance to test the hypothesized task effects using representative instantaneous postures. The use of this scheme is illustrated by an experiment that examines two generic task factors: hand motion direction and motion completion time. Results suggest that hand motion direction is a significant task factor in determining instantaneous postures, whereas a distinctive difference in the time to complete a motion does not appear to have a significant effect. We discuss the concept of an instantaneous posture and its utility in dynamic studies of movements, some insights into human reaching movement control strategy, and implications for the development of a 3D dynamic posture prediction model.

scholarly journals Effects of target location and uncertainty on reaching movements in standing position

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz de França Bahia Loureiro Junior ◽  
Sandra Maria Sbeghen Ferreira de Freitas ◽  
Paulo Barbosa de Freitas
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Movement Time ◽  
Target Position ◽  
Standing Position ◽  
Reaching Movements ◽  
Radial Error ◽  
Arm Reaching ◽  
The Right

The effects of target location and uncertainty of target position on reaching movements while standing were investigated. Ten healthy, right-handed adults stood facing a 17'' touchscreen. They were instructed to press with their right index fingertip a push bottom and touch the center of the target displayed on the screen after it was lighted on, moving quickly their arm. The target was shown either ipsi- or contralateral to the right arm and either in a certain or uncertain position. Reaction time (RT), movement time (MT), and radial error (RE) were assessed. Results revealed shorter RT (≈ 35 ms) and smaller RE (≈ 0.19 cm) for certain than for uncertain condition and slightly longer RT (≈ 8 ms) and MT (≈ 18 ms) for reaches towards the contralateral target. In conclusion, the findings of this study showing the effect of uncertainty of target location as well as target position are also applied to arm reaching in standing position.

The processing of visual and auditory information for reaching movements

2015 ◽  
Vol 80 (5) ◽  
pp. 757-773 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl M. Glazebrook ◽  
Timothy N. Welsh ◽  
Luc Tremblay
Keyword(s):  
Reaching Movements ◽  
Auditory Information

Decoupling the actions of the eyes from the hand alters beta and gamma synchrony within SPL

2014 ◽  
Vol 111 (11) ◽  
pp. 2210-2221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia F. Sayegh ◽  
Kara M. Hawkins ◽  
Bogdan Neagu ◽  
J. Douglas Crawford ◽  
Kari L. Hoffman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Local Field ◽  
Rhesus Macaques ◽  
Motor Task ◽  
Field Potential ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Movement Control ◽  
Reaching Movements ◽  
State Planning ◽  
Hand Orientation ◽  
Visuomotor Transformations

Eye-hand coordination is crucial for our ability to interact with the world around us. However, much of the visually guided reaches that we perform require a spatial decoupling between gaze direction and hand orientation. These complex decoupled reaching movements are in contrast to more standard eye and hand reaching movements in which the eyes and the hand are coupled. The superior parietal lobule (SPL) receives converging eye and hand signals; however, what is yet to be understood is how the activity within this region is modulated during decoupled eye and hand reaches. To address this, we recorded local field potentials within SPL from two rhesus macaques during coupled vs. decoupled eye and hand movements. Overall we observed a distinct separation in synchrony within the lower 10- to 20-Hz beta range from that in the higher 30- to 40-Hz gamma range. Specifically, within the early planning phase, beta synchrony dominated; however, the onset of this sustained beta oscillation occurred later during eye-hand decoupled vs. coupled reaches. As the task progressed, there was a switch to low-frequency and gamma-dominated responses, specifically for decoupled reaches. More importantly, we observed local field potential activity to be a stronger task (coupled vs. decoupled) and state (planning vs. execution) predictor than that of single units alone. Our results provide further insight into the computations of SPL for visuomotor transformations and highlight the necessity of accounting for the decoupled eye-hand nature of a motor task when interpreting movement control research data.

scholarly journals To transfer or not to transfer? Kinematics and laterality quotient predict interlimb transfer of motor learning

2015 ◽  
Vol 114 (5) ◽  
pp. 2764-2774 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Z. Lefumat ◽  
Jean-Louis Vercher ◽  
R. Chris Miall ◽  
Jonathan Cole ◽  
Frank Buloup ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Motor Learning ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
Motor Behavior ◽  
Movement Control ◽  
Arm Movement ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Reaching Movements ◽  
Rotating Platform ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Positive Correlations

Humans can remarkably adapt their motor behavior to novel environmental conditions, yet it remains unclear which factors enable us to transfer what we have learned with one limb to the other. Here we tested the hypothesis that interlimb transfer of sensorimotor adaptation is determined by environmental conditions but also by individual characteristics. We specifically examined the adaptation of unconstrained reaching movements to a novel Coriolis, velocity-dependent force field. Right-handed subjects sat at the center of a rotating platform and performed forward reaching movements with the upper limb toward flashed visual targets in prerotation, per-rotation (i.e., adaptation), and postrotation tests. Here only the dominant arm was used during adaptation and interlimb transfer was assessed by comparing performance of the nondominant arm before and after dominant-arm adaptation. Vision and no-vision conditions did not significantly influence interlimb transfer of trajectory adaptation, which on average was significant but limited. We uncovered a substantial heterogeneity of interlimb transfer across subjects and found that interlimb transfer can be qualitatively and quantitatively predicted for each healthy young individual. A classifier showed that in our study, interlimb transfer could be predicted based on the subject's task performance, most notably motor variability during learning, and his or her laterality quotient. Positive correlations suggested that variability of motor performance and lateralization of arm movement control facilitate interlimb transfer. We further show that these individual characteristics can predict the presence and the magnitude of interlimb transfer of left-handers. Overall, this study suggests that individual characteristics shape the way the nervous system can generalize motor learning.

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