Prehension movements in the macaque monkey: effects of perturbation of object size and location

While the neural bases of prehension have been extensively studied in monkeys, a few kinematic studies have examined their prehension behavior. Recently (Roy et al. 2000, 2002), we have described the kinematics of reaching and grasping in freely behaving monkeys under normal conditions by applying the high-resolution recording techniques (Optotrak system) and behavioral paradigms used in humans. Here we determined whether online movement reorganization observed in monkeys following sudden changes of either object size or location at movement onset is similar to that observed in humans. We found that changing object size led to rapid on-flight re-calibration of the different movement parameters, eventually preserving the unitary aspect of the movement with a minor time cost. By contrast, a shift in object location triggered a massive time-consuming reorganization. Re-directed movements appeared as a concatenation of two sub-movements: a first one directed to the initial object and a second one directed to the new object location. These findings first complement our earlier studies in providing further evidence of the similarities between monkey and human prehension. Second, they suggest that the two components of prehension, reaching and grasping, interact through coordination mechanisms that are more efficient to correct for size than for location perturbation. This difference may reflect a hierarchical organization in which reaching would be the subordinate of grasping in both primate species.