Upper limb asymmetries in the perception of proprioceptively determined dynamic position sense

Recent studies of position-related proprioceptive sense have provided evidence of a nonpreferred left arm advantage in right-handed individuals. The present study sought to determine whether similar asymmetries might exist in "dynamic position" sense. Thirteen healthy, right-handed adults were blindfolded and seated with arms placed on instrumented manipulanda. In Part 1, subjects performed dynamic position matching of 3 target elbow amplitudes determined with the preferred or nonpreferred arm, and then matched during movement of the same or opposite elbow. In Part 2, a similar paradigm was used, but with varying target determination speeds to account for the so called "tau effect." Overall, it was found that errors were smaller when the matching phase involved the nonpreferred arm, especially for larger target amplitudes. This asymmetry was independent of the tau effect and likely reflects specialization of the right hemisphere/left arm for proprioceptive feedback processing that is either position- or dynamic position-related.