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Suppression of mutually incompatible proprioceptive and visual action effects in tool use
Marvin Liesner1, Wilfried Kunde1
1Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.
Plos One
|November 18, 2020
Summary
Humans can suppress visual tool effects or body sensations to reduce movement interference. This study shows that neglecting tool effects is possible when body sensations are more task-relevant, impacting our awareness during tool use.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Human Motor Control
- Perception and Action
Background:
- Tool use often involves divergent hand and tool movements, leading to potential unawareness of the effector body part (e.g., hand).
- Previous research suggests 'haptic neglect' of bodily sensations may reduce interference between body and tool movement representations.
- Alternatively, neglecting tool sensations to focus on body movements could also mitigate interference.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether humans can suppress tool-related sensory representations or body-related proprioceptive sensations.
- To examine the role of task-relevance in modulating the suppression of body versus tool representations during tool use.
- To test the hypothesis that neglecting tool-related sensations is beneficial when body-related effects are task-relevant.
Main Methods:
- A controlled experiment was designed to manipulate the task-relevance of body-related versus tool-related effects.
- Participants performed tasks involving tool use with divergent hand and tool movements.
- Sensory representations (visual for tool effects, proprioceptive for body movements) were assessed under varying task-relevance conditions.
Main Results:
- Visual, tool-related effect representations can be suppressed effectively.
- Proprioceptive, body-related sensations can also be suppressed when they interfere with task goals.
- Suppression of either body or tool representations depends on their relative task-relevance, with increased relevance of body effects facilitating suppression of tool effects.
Conclusions:
- The brain can selectively suppress sensory representations related to either the body or the tool during tool use.
- Task-relevance is a critical factor determining which sensory information is prioritized or suppressed.
- This selective suppression mechanism helps optimize performance by reducing interference between competing representations, enhancing goal achievement in tool-use scenarios.
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