Weiler H T, Awiszus F
Neuromuscular Research Group at the Department of Orthopedics, Otto-von-Guericke-University, Magdeburg, Germany.
Exp Brain Res. 2000 Apr;131(3):375-80. doi: 10.1007/s002219900326.
A debate exists in the literature as to what extent perception is conscious. In some publications regarding proprioception, the term proprioception has explicitly only been seen as properly used when subjects were able to report the imposed movement's direction. Detections of movements without movement-direction perception, have been seen as nonspecific. Since a lot of studies discussed this point but never tested it explicitly, we tested it by using nonspecific hunting paradigms (only the occurrence of a movement has to be detected, not its direction) with the following rationale. If the perception performance is really nonspecific, no difference regarding the movement's direction should be found. Thus, if we found a different detection performance regarding flexion and extension by means of a nonspecific paradigm, it would demonstrate that this "nonspecific" perception is already specific. Therefore, we measured the perception characteristics separately for flexion and extension. The perception characteristics have been determined from the amplitude-velocity-relation curve. Two different, nonspecific hunting paradigms, modifications of our previously published specific hunting paradigm, have been used. Thus, we determined pairs of threshold values, regarding amplitude hunting using three different angular velocities (0.1 degrees s(-1), 0.25 degrees s(-1), and 0.5 degrees s(-1)) and regarding velocity hunting using three different angular displacements (0.25 degrees, 0.5 degrees, and 1 degrees) as well, for flexion and extension, respectively. We found that both threshold paradigms (velocity hunting and amplitude hunting) revealed the same perception characteristics for a given movement direction. With an increasing angular velocity, angular displacement threshold values converged toward a common value for flexion and extension (about 0.2 degrees); with an increasing angular displacement, angular velocity threshold values converged toward separate values for flexion (about 0.06 degrees s(-1)) and extension (about 0.1 degrees s(-1)). Thus, our findings demonstrate that detection performance is specific and not bound to conscious perception, since specific thresholds for flexion and extension were revealed with nonspecific hunting paradigms.
关于感知在多大程度上是有意识的，文献中存在争议。在一些关于本体感觉的出版物中，只有当受试者能够报告施加运动的方向时，本体感觉这个术语才被明确视为正确使用。在没有运动方向感知的情况下检测到运动，被视为非特异性的。由于许多研究讨论了这一点，但从未明确测试过，我们通过使用非特异性狩猎范式（只需要检测到运动的发生，而不是其方向）进行了测试，理由如下。如果感知性能真的是非特异性的，那么在运动方向上应该没有差异。因此，如果我们通过非特异性范式发现了关于屈伸的不同检测性能，那就表明这种“非特异性”感知实际上是特异性的。因此，我们分别测量了屈伸的感知特征。感知特征是根据幅度 - 速度关系曲线确定的。我们使用了两种不同的、非特异性狩猎范式，它们是我们之前发表的特异性狩猎范式的变体。因此，我们分别针对屈伸确定了成对的阈值，对于幅度狩猎，使用三种不同的角速度（0.1度每秒、0.25度每秒和0.5度每秒），对于速度狩猎，也使用三种不同的角位移（0.25度、0.5度和1度）。我们发现，对于给定的运动方向，两种阈值范式（速度狩猎和幅度狩猎）都显示出相同的感知特征。随着角速度增加，角位移阈值对于屈伸趋向于一个共同值（约0.2度）；随着角位移增加，角速度阈值对于屈伸趋向于不同的值（屈伸分别约为0.06度每秒和0.1度每秒）。因此，我们的研究结果表明，检测性能是特异性的，并不局限于有意识的感知，因为使用非特异性狩猎范式揭示了屈伸的特定阈值。
