Role of proprioception in corrective visually-guided movements: larger movement errors in both arms of a deafferented...

Proprioception plays an important role in both feedforward and feedback processes underlying movement control. This has been shown with individuals who suffered a profound proprioceptive loss and use vision to partially compensate for the sensory loss. The purpose of this study was to specifically examine the role of proprioception in feedback motor responses to visual perturbations by examining voluntary arm movements in an individual with a rare case of selective peripheral deafferentation (GL). We compared her left and right hand movements with those of age-matched female control participants (70.0 years ± 0.2 SEM) during a reaching task. Participants were asked to move their unseen hand, represented by a cursor on the screen, quickly and accurately to reach a visual target. A visual perturbation could be pseudorandomly applied, at movement onset, to either the target position (target jump) or the cursor position (cursor jump). Results showed that despite the continuous visual feedback that was provided, GL produced larger errors in final position accuracy compared to control participants, with her left nondominant hand being more erroneous after a cursor jump. We also found that the proprioceptively-deafferented individual produced less spatially efficient movements than the control group. Overall, these results provide evidence of a heavier reliance on proprioceptive feedback for movements of the nondominant hand relative to the dominant hand, supporting the view of a lateralization of the feedback processes underlying motor control.