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On the nature of the vestibular control of arm-reaching movements during whole-body rotations

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Abstract

Recent studies report efficient vestibular control of goal-directed arm movements during body motion. This contribution tested whether this control relies (a) on an updating process in which vestibular signals are used to update the perceived egocentric position of surrounding objects when body orientation changes, or (b) on a sensorimotor process, i.e. a transfer function between vestibular input and the arm motor output that preserves hand trajectory in space despite body rotation. Both processes were separately and specifically adapted. We then compared the respective influences of the adapted processes on the vestibular control of arm-reaching movements. The rationale was that if a given process underlies a given behavior, any adaptive modification of this process should give rise to observable modification of the behavior. The updating adaptation adapted the matching between vestibular input and perceived body displacement in the surrounding world. The sensorimotor adaptation adapted the matching between vestibular input and the arm motor output necessary to keep the hand fixed in space during body rotation. Only the sensorimotor adaptation significantly altered the vestibular control of arm-reaching movements. Our results therefore suggest that during passive self-motion, the vestibular control of arm-reaching movements essentially derives from a sensorimotor process by which arm motor output is modified on-line to preserve hand trajectory in space despite body displacement. In contrast, the updating process maintaining up-to-date the egocentric representation of visual space seems to contribute little to generating the required arm compensation during body rotations.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and by the Université de la Méditerranée. We thank Alain Donneaud for his technical assistance when building the experimental set-up, as well as Marcel Kaszap, Thelma Coyle, and Frank Buloup for programming expertise.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMR Mouvement et Perception, CNRS et Université de la Méditerranée, 163 Avenue de Luminy, 13288, Marseille, France

    Jean-Pierre Bresciani, Gabriel M. Gauthier, Jean-Louis Vercher & Jean Blouin

  2. Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Spemannstr. 38, 72076, Tübingen, Germany

    Jean-Pierre Bresciani

Authors
  1. Jean-Pierre Bresciani
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  2. Gabriel M. Gauthier
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  3. Jean-Louis Vercher
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  4. Jean Blouin
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Correspondence to Jean Blouin.

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Bresciani, JP., Gauthier, G.M., Vercher, JL. et al. On the nature of the vestibular control of arm-reaching movements during whole-body rotations. Exp Brain Res 164, 431–441 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-005-2263-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-005-2263-4

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