Motor and sensory disturbances induced by sensorimotor conflicts during passive and active movements in healthy participants

Abstract

Sensorimotor conflict induces both sensory and motor disturbances, but the specific factors playing a role in conflict-induced disturbances are still misunderstood. For example, we still do not know the role played by motor intention (vs. a purely visuo-proprioceptive conflict) or the influence of specific types of incongruent visual feedback. The objective of this study was threefold: 1- to compare the effect of passive and active movement during sensorimotor conflict on sensory disturbances measured with a questionnaire; 2- to compare the effect of three incongruent visual feedback conditions on sensory and motor (mediolateral drift and movement amplitude) disturbances; 3- to test whether conflict-induced sensory and motor disturbances were stable over time. 20 healthy participants realized active or passive cyclic upper limb movements while viewing either congruent or incongruent visual feedback about their movement using a robotized exoskeleton combined with 2D virtual reality interface. First, results showed that in condition of conflict, participants reported higher sensory disturbances during active movements compared to passive movements (p = 0.034), suggesting that the efference copy reinforces the conflict between vision and proprioception. Second, the three conditions of incongruence in the active condition induced similar sensory (all p>0.45) and motor disturbances (medio-lateral drift: all p>0.59 and amplitude: all p>0.25), suggesting that conflict induced motor disturbances could be related more to the observation of another movement rather than to a detection of conflict between motor intention and sensory feedback. Finally, both sensory and motor disturbances were stable over time (all ICCs between 0.76 and 0.87), demonstrating low variability within participants. Overall, our results suggest that the efference copy is more involved in sensory disturbances than in motor disturbances, suggesting that they might rely on independent processes.

Impact of Experimental Tonic Pain on Corrective Motor Responses to Mechanical Perturbations

“…The fact that no main effect of the conditions (P, VPc, and VPi) was observed confirms previous findings showing that EV responses are mainly based on proprioception [19,38] and extend them by demonstrating that this still holds when there is a clear mismatch between visual and proprioceptive information (i.e., movement occurring in opposite directions). This contrasts with studies on self-initiated voluntary movements showing that discordance between visual feedback and voluntary movement induces motor perturbations [34,39,40]. This discrepancy between the two types of task is probably explained by the fact that corrective muscle responses need to be performed very fast, while the motor tasks using self-initiated voluntary movements are generally slow.…”

Mutual correlations between regulation disorders of sensory processing (RDSP) in school-age children

“…However, this may be due to the fact that the study was performed during the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic, when most children and adolescents had significantly reduced physical activity [21,22]. Many hours of using cell phones and computers related to among others distance learning, combined with limitation of motor activity, is a significant factor in the increased level of sensorimotor disintegration [23][24][25] and could have been a cause of the high levels of individual RDSPs, but verification of this would require an extended study, including, inter alia, characteristics of the use of electronic devices by the child.…”

Virtual Reality-Induced Sensorimotor Conflict Evokes Limb-Specific Sensory Disturbances in Complex Regional Pain Syndrome

“…The experimental task was similar to previous studies in our lab (Brun et al, 2018a(Brun et al, , 2020.…”

“…After each trial, participants had to verbally respond to a questionnaire about their perception of their UL using an eight-item questionnaire (Brun et al, 2018a). Questions were about pain, discomfort, the perception of losing a limb, having an extra limb, change in weight and/or temperature, feelings of peculiarity and losing control.…”

“…Motor disturbances were assessed using two variables based on the position of the index fingertip (computed by the KINARM): Amplitude and mediolateral Drift (Brun et al, 2018a). For the Amplitude, anteroposterior coordinates were computed for each peak of flexion and extension.…”