Abstract
Neurophysiologic studies have shown differences in brain activation between pointing and grasping movements. We asked whether these two movement types would differ in their cognitive costs of motor planning. To this end, we designed a sequential, continuous posture selection task, suitable to investigate pointing and grasping movements to identical target locations. Participants had to open a column of drawers or point to a column of targets in ascending and descending progression. The global hand pro/supination at the moment of drawer/target contact was measured. The size of the motor hysteresis effect, i.e., the persistence to a former posture, was used as a proxy for the cognitive cost of motor planning. A larger hysteresis effect equals higher cognitive cost. Both motor tasks had similar costs of motor planning, but a larger range of motion was found for the grasping movements.
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Notes
Please note that slope refers to the parameter in the sigmoid function y = 0.5 · range · tanh(slope · (x − offset)). The real slope of the two sigmoid functions, which results from the combined effect of the slope and range parameter, is not the same. This difference, however, is due to the difference in the range parameter, not in the slope parameter.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology ‘CITEC’ (EXC 277) at Bielefeld University, which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
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Schütz, C., Weigelt, M. & Schack, T. Cognitive costs of motor planning do not differ between pointing and grasping in a sequential task. Exp Brain Res 234, 2035–2043 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-016-4608-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-016-4608-6