Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Concept Videos

Major Somatic Sensory Pathways01:28

Major Somatic Sensory Pathways

1.4K
Sensory impulses related to touch, pressure, vibration, and proprioception from various body parts, such as the limbs, trunk, neck, and posterior head, travel to the cerebral cortex through the posterior column-medial lemniscus pathway. The pathway’s name derives from the two white-matter tracts that convey the impulses: the spinal cord's posterior column and the brainstem's medial lemniscus. First-order sensory neurons extend their axons into the spinal cord, forming the...
1.4K
Hierarchy of Motor Control01:18

Hierarchy of Motor Control

4.2K
The hierarchy of motor control refers to the different levels of organization and processing involved in controlling movement in the body. These levels range from higher cortical areas involved in planning and decision-making to lower spinal cord reflexes that respond automatically to external stimuli.
4.2K
Observational Learning01:12

Observational Learning

408
Albert Bandura's observational learning, also known as imitation or modeling, occurs when a person observes and imitates another's behavior. It is a quicker process than operant conditioning. A well-known example is the Bobo doll study, where children who saw an adult acting aggressively towards the doll were more likely to act aggressively when left alone, compared to those who observed a nonaggressive adult. Many psychologists view observational learning as a form of latent learning...
408
Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex01:14

Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex

5.2K
The cerebral cortex, the brain's outermost layer, is pivotal in processing complex cognitive tasks, emotions, and various sensory inputs and executing voluntary motor activities. This intricate structure is divided into three primary functional areas: the motor areas, sensory areas, and association areas.
Motor Areas
The motor areas located in the frontal lobe are central to controlling voluntary movements. This region is further subdivided into the primary motor cortex and the premotor cortex....
5.2K
Indirect Motor Pathways01:22

Indirect Motor Pathways

1.9K
The indirect motor or extrapyramidal pathways originate in the brainstem, the lower portion of the brain that connects it to the spinal cord. They consist of several distinct tracts, each with specialized functions. The four main tracts of the indirect motor pathways are the vestibulospinal tract, the reticulospinal tract, the tectospinal tract, and the rubrospinal tract.
The vestibulospinal tract originates in the vestibular nuclei of the brainstem. The vestibular system detects changes in...
1.9K
Avoidance Learning and Learned Helplessness01:14

Avoidance Learning and Learned Helplessness

2.0K
Avoidance learning and learned helplessness are critical concepts in understanding behavioral responses to negative stimuli.
Avoidance learning occurs when an organism learns that a specific behavior can prevent an unpleasant outcome. For example, a student who receives a bad grade may start studying harder to avoid future poor grades. This behavior persists even when the negative outcome is no longer present. Avoidance learning is powerful because it maintains behavior in the absence of the...
2.0K

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Re-emergence of orientation coding in primate IT cortex and deep networks reveals functional hubs for visual processing.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2026
Same author

Dissociable dynamic effects of expectation during statistical learning.

eLife·2026
Same author

Challenging the negativity bias in affective scene viewing: The role of social content.

Social cognitive and affective neuroscience·2025
Same author

Task-Irrelevant Phase but not Contrast Variability Unlocks Generalization in Visual Perceptual Learning.

Journal of cognitive enhancement : towards the integration of theory and practice·2025
Same author

Childhood trauma affects speech and language measures in patients with major depressive disorder during clinical interviews.

Journal of affective disorders·2025
Same author

A Neural Signature of Touch Aversion and Interpersonal Problems in Borderline Personality Disorder.

Psychotherapy and psychosomatics·2025

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Oct 23, 2025

The "Motor" in Implicit Motor Sequence Learning: A Foot-stepping Serial Reaction Time Task
10:39

The "Motor" in Implicit Motor Sequence Learning: A Foot-stepping Serial Reaction Time Task

Published on: May 3, 2018

8.7K

Previous Motor Actions Outweigh Sensory Information in Sensorimotor Statistical Learning.

Barbara Feulner1,2, Danilo Postin3,4, Caspar M Schwiedrzik5,6,7

  • 1Perception and Cognition Lab, European Neuroscience Institute Göttingen-A Joint Initiative of the University Medical Center Göttingen and the Max-Planck-Society, Göttingen 37077, Germany b.feulner18@imperial.ac.uk a.pooresmaeili@eni-g.de.

Eneuro
|August 20, 2021
PubMed
Summary

Humans learn statistical priors primarily from motor actions, not visual cues. This sensorimotor learning shows limited transfer between different response contexts, suggesting action-based representations are key for decision-making.

Keywords:
learningpriorprobabilisticrepresentationsaccadesensorimotor

More Related Videos

Assessing Corticospinal Excitability During Goal-Directed Reaching Behavior
05:05

Assessing Corticospinal Excitability During Goal-Directed Reaching Behavior

Published on: December 2, 2022

1.8K
Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior
09:49

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior

Published on: April 16, 2014

26.4K

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Oct 23, 2025

The "Motor" in Implicit Motor Sequence Learning: A Foot-stepping Serial Reaction Time Task
10:39

The "Motor" in Implicit Motor Sequence Learning: A Foot-stepping Serial Reaction Time Task

Published on: May 3, 2018

8.7K
Assessing Corticospinal Excitability During Goal-Directed Reaching Behavior
05:05

Assessing Corticospinal Excitability During Goal-Directed Reaching Behavior

Published on: December 2, 2022

1.8K
Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior
09:49

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior

Published on: April 16, 2014

26.4K

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Decision Making
  • Motor Control

Background:

  • Humans leverage statistical priors from experience to enhance decision-making.
  • The precise mechanisms and representations of prior learning, particularly its dependence on sensorimotor systems, remain unclear.
  • Previous research indicates both modality-specific and modality-general learning patterns.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the learning and representation of spatial priors using a saccadic eye movement task.
  • To determine whether prior learning is modality-specific (motor actions) or modality-general (visual hints).
  • To examine the transferability of sensorimotor priors across different motor response contexts.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized a saccadic eye movement task with unsupervised learning through visual hints.
  • Employed a model-comparison approach to analyze participants' prior knowledge representation.
  • Compared prior knowledge transfer between two distinct motor contexts (target-directed vs. anti-target-directed eye movements).

Main Results:

  • Prior knowledge was predominantly represented by participants' previous motor actions, with minimal influence from visual hints.
  • Despite similar learning curves and strategies, knowledge transfer between motor contexts was incomplete, evidenced by performance and confidence drops.
  • Sensorimotor priors formed over a few trials are preferentially based on motor representations.

Conclusions:

  • Human statistical sensorimotor priors are primarily formed from internal representations of previous motor actions.
  • Past sensory information has a limited role in forming these short-term priors.
  • The findings highlight the action-centric nature of sensorimotor learning and decision-making in humans.