Evidence for a Proprioception-Based Rapid On-Line Error Correction Mechanism for Hand Orientation during Reaching Movements in Blind Subjects

Abstract

The contribution of visual experience to the perception and sensorimotor control of spatial orientation of the hand was investigated in blind subjects. In "orientation-matching" tasks, subjects aligned a match handle held in their right hand to a target handle held in their left hand and fixed in different orientations, with both arms outstretched. In "letter-posting" task 1, the same subjects reached out and simultaneously oriented their right hand to insert the match handle into a target slot fixed in the same range of orientations. Orientations were signaled proprioceptively by a reference handle held in the left hand. Final hand orientation errors were smaller when blind subjects simultaneously reached out and rotated their hand to insert the match handle into the target slot in letter-posting task 1 than when they held their arm extended and aligned the handles in the orientation-matching task. In letter-posting task 2, blind subjects first aligned their hand to the orientation of the target and then subsequently reached to the target with the instruction to not change hand orientation during reaching. Despite the instruction, subjects showed a reduction in absolute hand orientation error from the beginning to the end of the reach. In all tasks, performance of blind subjects was very similar to that of blindfolded normally sighted subjects. These findings provide the first evidence of an automatic on-line error-correction mechanism for hand orientation guided only by proprioceptive inputs during reaching in blind subjects, and reveal that the on-line mechanism does not depend on prior visual experience.

Feedback and feedforward adaptation to visuomotor delay during reaching and slicing movements

“…The concept of two parallel feedforward controllers, one for the end‐point and the other for trajectory planning, is also consistent with previous studies that show: (i) separate processes for trajectory and end‐point movements in normal subjects (Sainburg & Wang, ; Wang & Sainburg, ; Arce et al ., ; Scheidt et al ., ) and (ii) stroke‐region‐specific damage and its effects on these variables (Haaland et al ., ; Schaefer et al ., , ) during exposure to Coriolis force fields (Dizio & Lackner, ; DiZio & Lackner, ) or during generalisation from the dominant to the non‐dominant hand (Duff & Sainburg, ). The ability of blind subjects to adapt to perturbations (DiZio & Lackner, ; Gosselin‐Kessiby et al ., ) or a similar adaptation capability of subjects with a proprioception feedback deficit (Bernier et al ., ) suggests that each modality has the ability to adapt independently of the other. In addition to the obvious benefit of redundancy in the living organism, this lack of dependence provides two additional benefits.…”

Target modality affects visually guided online control of reaching

“…Recent work (Gosselin-Kessiby, Kalaska, & Messier, 2009;Gosselin-Kessiby, Messier, & Kalaska, 2008) has provided further support for the importance of proprioception to online control. In these studies participants completed a task analogous to inserting a letter into a postbox with changing slot orientations.…”

Intra‐areal and corticocortical circuits arising in the dysgranular zone of rat primary somatosensory cortex that processes deep somatic input

“…It also updates the current positions of the limbs relative to one another, thereby guiding the coordination of intersegmental movements of the body limbs for active touch (Ghez et al,1995; Devanne and Maton,1998; Sainburg et al,1999; Ebied et al, 2004). In addition, by detecting altered joint positions, proprioception reports unexpected perturbations in the environment, which prompts rapid adjustments in the anticipatory feed‐forward motor programs to accommodate the perturbations (Hasan,1992; Inglis et al,1994; Fasold et al,2008; Gosselin‐Kessiby et al,2009).…”