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Related Experiment Video

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Perceived finger orientation is biased towards functional task spaces.

Lindsey E Fraser1, Laurence R Harris2

  • 1Dept Psychology, Center for Vision Research, York University, 4700 Keele St, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada. lfraser4@yorku.ca.

Experimental Brain Research
|August 19, 2016
PubMed
Summary

Perceived finger orientation is biased towards a functional, not anatomical, representation of hand space. This bias varies by hand and plane, reflecting typical hand use during tasks.

Keywords:
FingerHandOrientationPerceptionPosition

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Human motor control
  • Proprioception

Background:

  • The brain's representation of limb position is crucial for motor control.
  • Previous research indicates hand position perception is biased towards a plausible manual task space without visual feedback.
  • The extent to which finger orientation perception is similarly biased remains largely unexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether perceived finger orientation is systematically biased in right-handed individuals.
  • To determine if these biases differ across different planes of movement and hands.
  • To explore the relationship between perceived finger orientation and non-visual spatial references.

Main Methods:

  • Participants' index fingers were passively rotated in the frontoparallel and horizontal planes.
  • Perceived finger orientation was reported by adjusting a superimposed visual line.
  • Orientation was also reported with respect to non-visual targets like gravity and straight ahead.

Main Results:

  • Perceived finger orientations showed systematic biases that varied between hands and planes.
  • Both hands exhibited an inward bias in the frontoparallel plane (10°).
  • In the horizontal plane, the left hand showed a greater inward bias (25°) than the right hand (2°).
  • Biases observed with visual targets were comparable to those with non-visual targets.

Conclusions:

  • Perceived finger orientation is subject to biases, suggesting a functional rather than purely anatomical spatial representation.
  • The observed asymmetry in biases across hands and planes aligns with typical hand postures during manual tasks.
  • These findings support a dynamic, task-dependent neural representation of the limbs in space.