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Sensory integration during reaching: the effects of manipulating visual target availability
Sajida Khanafer1, Erin K Cressman
1School of Human Kinetics, University of Ottawa, 125 University Private, Ottawa, ON, K1N 6N5, Canada, sajida_k83@yahoo.com.
Experimental Brain Research
|August 23, 2014
Summary
The brain combines visual and proprioceptive information for reaching, but does not adjust sensory weighting when visual cue availability changes. This suggests fixed sensory processing despite environmental alterations.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Motor Control
- Sensory Integration
Background:
- The brain integrates visual and proprioceptive information for accurate limb movement planning.
- The maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) model posits that sensory inputs are weighted based on reliability.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if the brain dynamically adjusts sensory cue weighting based on environmental changes.
- To determine if manipulating visual cue availability alters the brain's reliance on visual versus proprioceptive information during reaching tasks.
Main Methods:
- Twelve healthy subjects performed reaching movements to visual, proprioceptive, or combined visual-proprioceptive targets.
- Visual cue availability was manipulated by delaying or removing the visual target at different time points.
- Endpoint positions of reaches were analyzed to infer sensory cue weighting strategies.
Main Results:
- Subjects integrated visual and proprioceptive information according to the MLE model for visual-proprioceptive reaches.
- Reaching errors to visual targets increased with longer visual delays, particularly in the vertical direction.
- Reach variability remained unchanged, and subjects did not alter their sensory weighting when visual cue availability was manipulated.
Conclusions:
- The brain adheres to the MLE model for combining visual and proprioceptive information during reaching.
- Altering the availability of visual information does not suffice to induce reweighting of sensory cues in motor planning.
- Sensory processing strategies appear to be relatively fixed, even when environmental sensory reliability changes.
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