Affiliation:
1. Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, California;
2. Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland; and
3. Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, California
Abstract
Everyday movements often have multiple solutions. Many of these solutions arise from biomechanical redundancies. Often, however, the goal does not require a unique movement. To examine how people exploit task-related redundancy, we observed as participants produced three-dimensional (3-D) reaching movements, moving to one of two rectangular targets that were diagonally oriented in the frontal ( x, y) plane. On most trials, the movement was perturbed by a vertical, velocity-dependent force. Since participants were free to move in 3-D space, online corrections could involve movement along the perturbed, vertical dimension, as well as the nonperturbed, horizontal dimension. If the motor system exploits task redundancies, then corrections along the horizontal dimension should depend on the orientation of the target. Consistent with this prediction, participants modified both the horizontal and vertical coordinates of the trajectory over the course of learning, and the horizontal component was sensitive to the orientation of the target. Furthermore, participants produced online corrections with a horizontal component that brought the hand closer to the target. These results suggest that we not only correct for mismatches between expected and experienced forces but also exploit task-specific redundancies to efficiently improve performance.
Publisher
American Physiological Society
Subject
Physiology,General Neuroscience
Cited by
8 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献