Do motor commands contribute to positional estimation?

  • Toshitaka Kimura (NTT Communication Science Laboratories)
  • Hiroaki Gomi

We examined whether motor commands can be used for estimation of limb’s position when sensory information is uncertain. Subjects performed active or passive right wrist flexion to several targets, and then reproduced the perceived right movement using the left hand. We imposed no online visual feedback of both hands and transient vibration to the right wrist extensor to disturb the proprioception, which was designed to increase proprioceptive uncertainty. Result showed that in the reproducing hand proprioception-biased error occurred in the passive task but reduced in the active task, suggesting that efference signals compensate for sensory uncertainty in estimating limb state.
Last-modified: 2012-12-18 (火) 15:56:32