Dissociation between executed and imagined bimanual movements in autism spectrum conditions

Piedimonte, Alessandro; Conson, Massimiliano; Frolli, Alessandro; Bari, Stefania; Gatta, Francesco Della; Rabuffetti, Marco; Keller, Roberto; Berti, Anna; Garbarini, Francesca

doi:10.1002/aur.1902

Cited by 10 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…However, to date, only one-handed reach to grasp has been studied in ASD, and it is unclear how individuals with ASD perform bimanual reach to grasp tasks (i.e., reaching with the goal of grasping separate targets with two limbs). While no studies have investigated discrete bimanual reach to grasp in ASD, Piedimonte et al (2018) recently reported the results of a study looking at continuous bimanual drawing in adolescents and adults with autism spectrum conditions compared to control participants. Their results indicated that there was a significant coupling effect between the limbs for both the ASD and control groups when they were asked to concurrently draw a circle with one hand and a line with the other.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These results suggest similar bimanual coordination performance between the two groups. However, the authors also suggested that the circles-lines task may be a less demanding coordination task than reach-to-grasp since it involves mostly proximal muscles, and therefore may not be complex enough to elicit motor coordination differences (Piedimonte et al, 2018). The current study extends Piedimonte et al (2018) by looking at kinematic performance in a discrete bimanual reach to grasp task.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the authors also suggested that the circles-lines task may be a less demanding coordination task than reach-to-grasp since it involves mostly proximal muscles, and therefore may not be complex enough to elicit motor coordination differences (Piedimonte et al, 2018). The current study extends Piedimonte et al (2018) by looking at kinematic performance in a discrete bimanual reach to grasp task. Bimanual reach-to-grasp also creates an interesting behavioral paradigm for studying motor development due to the challenges it places on the perceptual-motor control system (Bingham et al, 2008; Mason et al, 2010), as it is not possible to visually fixate both limbs and both targets at the same time when they are spatially separated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bimanual Reach to Grasp Movements in Youth With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder

2019

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Reaching and grasping (prehension) is one of the earliest developing motor skills in humans, but continued prehension development in childhood and adolescence enables the performance of increasingly complex manual tasks. In individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) atypical unimanual reaching and grasping has been reported, but to date, no studies have investigated discrete bimanual movements. We examined unimanual and bimanual reach to grasp tasks in youth with ASD to better understand how motor performance might change with increasing complexity. Twenty youth with ASD (10.1 ± 2.4 years) and 17 youth with typical development (TD) (9.6 ± 2.6 years) were instructed to reach and grasp cubes that became illuminated. Participants were asked to reach out with the right and/or left hands to grasp and lift targets located at near (18 cm) and/or far (28 cm) distances. For the unimanual (simplest) condition, participants grasped one illuminated cube (with either the left or right hand). For the bimanual conditions, participants grasped two illuminated cubes located at the same distance from the start position (bimanual symmetric condition) or two illuminated cubes located at different distances (bimanual asymmetric condition). Significant interactions among diagnostic group, task complexity, and age were found for initiation time (IT) and movement time (MT). Specifically, the older children in both groups initiated and performed their movements faster in the unimanual condition than in the bimanual conditions, although the older children with ASD produced slower ITs and MTs compared to typically developing peers across all three conditions. Surprisingly, the younger children with ASD had similar ITs and MTs as their peers for the unimanual condition but did not considerably slow these times to adjust for the complexity of the bimanual tasks. We hypothesize that they chose to re-use the motor plans that were generated for the unimanual trials rather than generate more appropriate motor plans for the bimanual tasks. An atypical spatiotemporal relationship between MT and peak aperture (PA) was also found in the ASD group. Together, our results suggest deficits in motor planning that result in subtle effects on performance in younger children with ASD that become more pronounced with age.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bimanual Reach to Grasp Movements in Youth With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder

2019

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“…Thus, we were able to assess the performance of both the affected hand and the unimpaired hand in a bimanual coupling task, unlike in the previous studies (Garbarini et al, 2013; Garbarini, Turella, et al, 2015), in which only one arm was assessed. To study the bimanual coupling effect, we adopted the Circles−Lines Coupling Task (Burin, Kilteni, Rabuffetti, Slater, & Pia, 2019; della Gatta et al, 2017; Garbarini et al, 2012, 2013, 2014; Garbarini, Rabuffetti, et al, 2015; Garbarini, Turella, et al, 2015; Piedimonte et al, 2018): In this common spatial task, when participants draw simultaneously incongruent shapes (i.e., a line and a circle), the line drawing generally assumes an oval or curved shape. Crucially, this effect is not detectable in the unimanual (only one hand drawing lines) and in the congruent bimanual (both hands drawing lines) movements.…”

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confidence: 99%

Is bimanual interference affected in the case of a central proprioceptive loss? New insight from a left-brain-damaged single-case study.

et al. 2020

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Objective: It was suggested that the bimanual coupling effect might be linked to motor intentionality and planning, which are the top-down components of motor execution. However, previous results in pathological and healthy individuals have also underlined the pivotal role of bottom-up sensorimotor information. Method: In this single-case study, the Circles−Lines Coupling Task was administered to a left-parietal-brain-damaged individual. The cerebral lesion caused a central proprioceptive loss, relative to the impaired right hand, when out of the visual control. For the 1st time in literature, we sought to investigate whether the movement of the unaffected hand induced an efficient coupling effect on the movement of the affected one. The bimanual task was performed in the presence and absence of visual input. The patient’s performance was compared with that of healthy controls. Results: We observed the traditional bimanual coupling effect in healthy controls. Moreover, we also replicated the effect when they performed the task blindfolded. In the case of the patient, both hands showed the typical ovalization of the line trajectory when the task was performed in visual modality. It is interesting that when the patient performed the task blindfolded, the trajectories of the impaired right hand seemed to be not influenced by the concomitant circular movement of the spared left hand. Conclusions: The movement of the unaffected hand induced a bimanual coupling effect on the movement of the affected one only when the visual input was available. In absence of a visual feedback, the aberrant proprioceptive information might preclude the emerging of bimanual coupling, even in the case of a preserved motor intentionality and planning.

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“…Indeed, it is still possible that the neural representation underlying the equivalence between execution and imagery may extend to the spatial characteristics of movement, but only when it originates from intended sources (i.e., pre-planned direction of movement). For example, in a similar vein to the execution of bimanual movements, there is evidence that the executed straight-line movements of one limb can become contaminated and begin to coordinate with the imagined circular movements of the unused limb (Piedimonte et al 2018 ; see also, Ramsey et al 2010 ). In this instance, the imagined movement direction may have awakened a neural representation that is correspondingly designed for the physical execution of that same movement direction (Jeannerod 1994 , 1999 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining the equivalence between imagery and execution within the spatial domain – Does motor imagery account for signal-dependent noise?

2020

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Motor imagery is suggested to be functionally equivalent to physical execution as they each utilise a common neural representation. The present study examined whether motor imagery correspondingly reflects the spatial characteristics of physically executed movements, including the signal-dependent noise that typically manifests in more variable end locations (as indicated by effective target width; We). Participants executed or imagined a single, upper-limb target-directed aim in the horizontal medio-lateral direction. The start and end of the imagined movements were indexed by the lifting and lowering of the limb over the home position, respectively. Following each imagined movement, participants had to additionally estimate their imagined end location relative to the target. All the movements had to be completed at a pre-specified criterion time (400 ms, 600 ms, 800 ms). The results indicated that the We increased following a decrease in movement time for execution, but not imagery. Moreover, the total error of imagined movements was greater than the actual error of executed movements. While motor imagery may comprise a neural representation that also contributes to the execution of movements, it is unable to closely reflect the random sources of variability. This limitation of motor imagery may be attributed to the comparatively limited efferent motor signals.

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Dissociation between executed and imagined bimanual movements in autism spectrum conditions

Cited by 10 publications

References 45 publications

Bimanual Reach to Grasp Movements in Youth With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder

Bimanual Reach to Grasp Movements in Youth With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder

Is bimanual interference affected in the case of a central proprioceptive loss? New insight from a left-brain-damaged single-case study.

Examining the equivalence between imagery and execution within the spatial domain – Does motor imagery account for signal-dependent noise?

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