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Updated: Jul 12, 2025
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A Fully Automated Rodent Conditioning Protocol for Sensorimotor Integration and Cognitive Control Experiments
Published on: April 15, 2014
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Fast Feedback Responses to Categorical Sensorimotor Errors That Do Not Indicate Error Magnitude Are Optimized Based
Michael R McGarity-Shipley1, Simona Markovik Jantz1, Roland S Johansson2
1Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada.
Summary
The motor system adapts lifting force rapidly when an object is unexpectedly heavy, using memory to adjust responses within trials. This ensures effective object manipulation across different lifting contexts.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Motor Control
- Human Motor Performance
Background:
- Skilled motor performance relies on rapid corrective responses to maintain movement goals despite perturbations.
- Adaptability of corrective responses during reaching is known, but less is understood about responses during object manipulation post-grasp.
- The corrective response to an unexpectedly heavy object involves a rapid increase in vertical force due to absent sensory feedback.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the adaptability of the corrective lifting response when an object's weight is unexpectedly heavier than predicted.
- To determine if this response can be adapted based on memory of previous lifts, given the unknown error magnitude.
- To examine how short- and long-term experience influences the gain of the lifting response.
Main Methods:
- Participants repeatedly lifted objects that occasionally increased in weight on 'catch trials'.
- The gain (rate of force increase) of the corrective response was measured.
- Adaptation was assessed based on changes in response gain across trials and its relation to baseline and catch trial weights.
Main Results:
- Participants scaled the response gain to the heavier object weight within two to three catch trials.
- The response gain on the first catch trial scaled with the object's baseline weight.
- This demonstrates adaptation of the lifting response based on both short-term (recent trials) and long-term (baseline) experience.
Conclusions:
- The gain of the corrective lifting response is adaptable based on prior experience, even when the precise sensory prediction error is unknown.
- Both recent and long-term memories contribute to scaling the corrective force, preserving response efficacy across different lifting contexts.
- This highlights the motor system's ability to predict and adjust motor commands based on learned expectations.
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