No abstract

It would seem that the automatic and metrically accurate calibrations required for skilled actions are mediated by visual processes that are separate from those mediating our conscious experiential perception. Earlier studies on patients with neurological deficits suggest that these two types of processing may depend on quite separate, but interacting, visual pathways in the cerebral cortex.

Studies of the visual capacity of neurological patients have provided evidence for a dissociation between the perceptual report of a visual stimulus and the ability to direct spatially accurate movements toward that stimulus. Some patients with damage to the parietal lobe, for example, are unable to reach accurately towards visual targets that they unequivocally report seeing. Conversely, some patients with extensive damage to primary visual cortex can make accurate pointing movements or saccades toward a stimulus presented in their 'blind' scotoma. But in investigations of visuomotor control in patients with visual disorders, little consideration has been given to complex acts such as manual prehension. Grasping a three-dimensional object requires knowledge not only of the object's spatial location, but also of its form, orientation and size. We have examined a patient with a profound disorder in the perception of such object qualities. Our quantitative analyses demonstrate strikingly accurate guidance of hand and finger movements directed at the very objects whose qualities she fails to perceive. These data suggest that the neural substrates for the visual perception of object qualities such as shape, orientation and size are distinct from those underlying the use of those qualities in the control of manual skills.

When we reach towards an object that suddenly appears in our peripheral visual field, not only does our arm extend towards the object, but our eyes, head and body also move in such a way that the image of the object falls on the fovea. Popular models of how reaching movements are programmed have argued that while the first part of the limb movement is ballistic, subsequent corrections to the trajectory are made on the basis of dynamic feedback about the relative positions of the hand and the target provided by central vision. These models have assumed that the adjustments are dependent on seeing the hand moving with respect to the target. Here we present evidence that a change in the position of a visual target during a reaching movement can modify the trajectory even when vision of the hand is prevented. Moreover, these dynamic corrections to the trajectory of the moving limb occur without the subject perceiving the change in target location. These findings demonstrate that visual feedback about the relative position of the hand and target is not necessary for visually driven corrections in reaching to occur, and the mechanisms that maintain the apparent stability of a target in space are dissociable from those that mediate the visuomotor output directed at that target.