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Are reaching movements planned in kinematic or dynamic coordinates?

2010

Conference Paper

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Whether human reaching movements are planned and optimized in kinematic (task space) or dynamic (joint or muscle space) coordinates is still an issue of debate. The first hypothesis implies that a planner produces a desired end-effector position at each point in time during the reaching movement, whereas the latter hypothesis includes the dynamics of the muscular-skeletal control system to produce a continuous end-effector trajectory. Previous work by Wolpert et al (1995) showed that when subjects were led to believe that their straight reaching paths corresponded to curved paths as shown on a computer screen, participants adapted the true path of their hand such that they would visually perceive a straight line in visual space, despite that they actually produced a curved path. These results were interpreted as supporting the stance that reaching trajectories are planned in kinematic coordinates. However, this experiment could only demonstrate that adaptation to altered paths, i.e. the position of the end-effector, did occur, but not that the precise timing of end-effector position was equally planned, i.e., the trajectory. Our current experiment aims at filling this gap by explicitly testing whether position over time, i.e. velocity, is a property of reaching movements that is planned in kinematic coordinates. In the current experiment, the velocity profiles of cursor movements corresponding to the participant's hand motions were skewed either to the left or to the right; the path itself was left unaltered. We developed an adaptation paradigm, where the skew of the velocity profile was introduced gradually and participants reported no awareness of any manipulation. Preliminary results indicate that the true hand motion of participants did not alter, i.e. there was no adaptation so as to counterbalance the introduced skew. However, for some participants, peak hand velocities were lowered for higher skews, which suggests that participants interpreted the manipulation as mere noise due to variance in their own movement. In summary, for a visuomotor transformation task, the hypothesis of a planned continuous end-effector trajectory predicts adaptation to a modified velocity profile. The current experiment found no systematic adaptation under such transformation, but did demonstrate an effect that is more in accordance that subjects could not perceive the manipulation and rather interpreted as an increase of noise.

Author(s): Ellmer, A. and Schaal, S.
Book Title: Abstracts of Neural Control of Movement Conference (NCM 2010)
Year: 2010

Department(s): Autonomous Motion
Bibtex Type: Conference Paper (inproceedings)

Address: Naples, Florida, 2010
Cross Ref: p10422
Note: clmc

BibTex

@inproceedings{Ellmer_ANCMC_2010,
  title = {Are reaching movements planned in kinematic or dynamic coordinates?},
  author = {Ellmer, A. and Schaal, S.},
  booktitle = {Abstracts of Neural Control of Movement Conference (NCM 2010)},
  address = {Naples, Florida, 2010},
  year = {2010},
  note = {clmc},
  doi = {},
  crossref = {p10422}
}