Different adaptation rates to abrupt and gradual changes in environmental dynamics

Adaptation to an abrupt change in the dynamics of the interaction between the arm and the physical environment has been reported as occurring more rapidly but with less retention than adaptation to a gradual change in interaction dynamics. Faster adaptation to an abrupt change in interaction dynamics appears inconsistent with kinematic error sensitivity which has been shown to be greater for small errors than large errors. However, the comparison of adaptation rates was based on incomplete adaptation. Furthermore, the metric which was used as a proxy of the changing internal state, namely the linear regression between the force disturbance and the compensatory force (the adaptation index), does not distinguish between internal state inaccuracy resulting from amplitude or temporal errors. To resolve the apparent inconsistency, we compared the evolution of the internal state during complete adaptation to an abrupt and gradual change in interaction dynamics. We found no difference in the rate at which the adaptation index increased during adaptation to a gradual compared to an abrupt change in interaction dynamics. In addition, we separately examined amplitude and temporal errors using different metrics, and found that amplitude error was reduced more rapidly under the gradual than the abrupt condition, whereas temporal error (quantified by smoothness) was reduced more rapidly under the abrupt condition. We did not find any significant change in phase lag during adaptation under either condition. Our results also demonstrate that even after adaptation is complete, online feedback correction still plays a significant role in the control of reaching.