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The modulation of intermanual interactions during the specification of the directions of bimanual movements

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Abstract

In two experiments bimanual movements with various combinations of target directions were studied by means of the timed-response procedure. The findings revealed an adaptive modulation of intermanual interactions during direction specifications depending on particular target directions. For symmetric movements intermanual correlations of movement directions are positive, indicating a symmetric coupling. For parallel movements the positive intermanual correlations, observed at short preparation intervals, turn into negative correlations as the time available for motor preparation increases. Biases of mean directions, that can be observed for movements to targets with different eccentricities, reflect one or the other kind of coupling, symmetrical for symmetric target directions and parallel for parallel target directions. These biases are static, that is, they are present at long preparation times, and they are phasically enhanced at shorter preparation intervals. The task-adaptive modulation of intermanual interactions is superposed on a basic symmetry bias.

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Notes

  1. The different effects of measurement noise on the intermanual correlations of terminal and initial directions result from the different ranges of coordinates and can easily be illustrated by way of simulation. We generated two sets of correlated normally distributed directions (μ=30, σ2=5 ρ=0.8). For each direction we determined the x- and y-coordinates for vector lengths of 20 and 150 mm. These coordinates were rounded to units of 0.5 mm, corresponding to the coordinates used in the determination of initial and terminal directions in the experiment. For each length the directions were re-computed from the rounded coordinates. For a typical sample of 1000 cases the means were 29.98° and 30.02° for the left and right hand, respectively, the standard deviations were 2.22 and 2.25°, and the intermanual correlation was 0.8048. Means (and standard deviations) for the re-computed terminal directions were 29.98° (2.22°) and 30.02° (2.25°) with a correlation of 0.8050; means (and standard deviations) for the re-computed initial directions were 29.96° (2.25°) and 30.03° (2.30°) with a correlation of 0.7751. The differences in standard deviations and correlations are consistent across samples, but not the difference in the means.

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Acknowledgements

The research reported in this paper was supported by grant HE 1187/14-1 of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. We thank Barbara Herbst, Holger Küper, Kevin Schepers, Henning Stracke, and Petra Wallmeyer for their support in running the experiments, and Thomas Kleinsorge, Stephan Swinnen, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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  1. Institut für Arbeitsphysiologie an der Universität Dortmund, Ardeystraße 67, 44139, Dortmund, Germany

    Herbert Heuer & Wolfhard Klein

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  1. Herbert Heuer
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  2. Wolfhard Klein
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Correspondence to Herbert Heuer.

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Heuer, H., Klein, W. The modulation of intermanual interactions during the specification of the directions of bimanual movements. Exp Brain Res 169, 162–181 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-005-0135-6

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