Abstract
Reaction time (RT) is one of the most commonly used measures of neurological function and dysfunction. Despite the extensive studies on it, no study has ever examined the RT in the ankle. Twenty-two subjects were recruited to perform simple, 2- and 4-choice RT tasks by visually guiding a cursor inside a rectangular target with their ankle. RT did not change with spatial accuracy constraints imposed by different target widths in the direction of the movement. RT increased as a linear function of potential target stimuli, as would be predicted by Hick–Hyman law. Although the slopes of the regressions were similar, the intercept in dorsal–plantar (DP) direction was significantly smaller than the intercept in inversion–eversion (IE) direction. To explain this difference, we used a hierarchical Bayesian estimation of the Ratcliff’s (Psychol Rev 85:59, 1978) diffusion model parameters and divided processing time into cognitive components. The model gave a good account of RTs, their distribution and accuracy values, and hence provided a testimony that the non-decision processing time (overlap of posterior distributions between DP and IE < 0.045), the boundary separation (overlap of the posterior distributions < 0.1) and the evidence accumulation rate (overlap of the posterior distributions < 0.01) components of the RT accounted for the intercept difference between DP and IE. The model also proposed that there was no systematic change in non-decision processing time or drift rate when spatial accuracy constraints were altered. The results were in agreement with the memory drum hypothesis and could be further justified neurophysiologically by the larger innervation of the muscles controlling DP movements. This study might contribute to assessing deficits in sensorimotor control of the ankle and enlighten a possible target for correction in the framework of our on-going effort to develop robotic therapeutic interventions to the ankle of children with cerebral palsy.
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Notes
The results reported here are in agreement with the results of a different method applying the concept of “super-subjects” to the same data set (Michmizos and Krebs 2014b), in terms of the order of the best-fit models and the statistical significance of the differences in the estimated parameters, between DP and IE.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Thomas Wiecki for his help with the HDDM toolbox. This work was supported in part by a grant from the Cerebral Palsy International Research Foundation (CPIRF) and the Niarchos Foundation, by a grant from the VA Baltimore Medical Center contract 512-D05015 and by NIH Grant R01HD069776-02. Dr. K. P. Michmizos was partially supported by the Foundation for Education and European Culture. Dr. H. I. Krebs is a co-inventor in the MIT-held patent for the robotic device used in this work. He holds equity positions in Interactive Motion Technologies, the company that manufactures this type of technology under license to MIT.
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Michmizos, K.P., Krebs, H.I. Reaction time in ankle movements: a diffusion model analysis. Exp Brain Res 232, 3475–3488 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-014-4032-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-014-4032-8