Dissociating the Influence of Limb Posture and Visual Feedback Shifts on the Adaptation to Novel Movement Dynamics

Accurate movements of the upper limb require the integration of various forms of sensory feedback (e.g., visual and postural information). The influence of these different sensory modalities on reaching movements has been largely studied by assessing endpoint errors after selectively perturbing sensory estimates of hand location. These studies have demonstrated that both vision and proprioception make key contributions in determining the reach endpoint. However, their influence on motor output throughout movement remains unclear. Here we used separate perturbations of posture and visual information to dissociate their effects on reaching dynamics and temporal force profiles during point-to-point reaching movements. We tested human subjects (N = 32) and found that vision and posture modulate select aspects of reaching dynamics. Specifically, altering arm posture influences the relationship between temporal force patterns and the motion-state variables of hand position and acceleration, whereas dissociating visual feedback influences the relationship between force patterns and the motion-state variables of velocity and acceleration. Next, we examined the extent these baseline motion-state relationships influence motor adaptation based on perturbations of movement dynamics. We trained subjects using a velocity-dependent force-field to probe the extent arm posture-dependent influences persisted after exposure to a motion-state dependent perturbation. Changes in the temporal force profiles due to variations in arm posture were not reduced by adaptation to novel movement dynamics, but persisted throughout learning. These results suggest that vision and posture differentially influence the internal estimation of limb state throughout movement and play distinct roles in forming the response to external perturbations during movement.