Nissens Tom, Fiehler Katja
Experimental Psychology, Justus-Liebig University Giessen , Germany.
J Neurophysiol. 2018 Jan 1;119(1):118-123. doi: 10.1152/jn.00618.2017. Epub 2017 Oct 11.
Simultaneous eye and hand movements are highly coordinated and tightly coupled. This raises the question whether the selection of eye and hand targets relies on a shared attentional mechanism or separate attentional systems. Previous studies have revealed conflicting results by reporting evidence for both a shared as well as separate systems. Movement properties such as movement curvature can provide novel insights into this question as they provide a sensitive measure for attentional allocation during target selection. In the current study, participants performed simultaneous eye and hand movements to the same or different visual target locations. We show that both saccade and reaching movements curve away from the other effector's target location when they are simultaneously performed to spatially distinct locations. We argue that there is a shared attentional mechanism involved in selecting eye and hand targets that may be found on the level of effector-independent priority maps. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Movement properties such as movement curvature have been widely neglected as important sources of information in investigating whether the attentional systems underlying target selection for eye and hand movements are separate or shared. We convincingly show that movement curvature is influenced by the other effector's target location in simultaneous eye and hand movements to spatially distinct locations. Our results provide evidence for shared attentional systems involved in the selection of saccade and reach targets.
眼睛和手部的同步运动高度协调且紧密耦合。这就引发了一个问题，即眼睛和手部目标的选择是依赖于共享的注意力机制还是独立的注意力系统。先前的研究通过报告支持共享系统和独立系统的证据，得出了相互矛盾的结果。诸如运动曲率等运动属性可以为这个问题提供新的见解，因为它们为目标选择过程中的注意力分配提供了一个敏感的度量。在当前的研究中，参与者对相同或不同的视觉目标位置进行眼睛和手部的同步运动。我们发现，当扫视和伸手动作同时指向空间上不同的位置时，它们都会向另一个效应器的目标位置弯曲。我们认为，在选择眼睛和手部目标时存在一种共享的注意力机制，这种机制可能存在于与效应器无关的优先级地图层面。新内容及值得注意的点：诸如运动曲率等运动属性在研究眼睛和手部运动目标选择所基于的注意力系统是独立还是共享时，一直被广泛忽视，未被视为重要的信息来源。我们有说服力地表明，在眼睛和手部同步指向空间上不同位置的运动中，运动曲率会受到另一个效应器目标位置的影响。我们的结果为参与扫视和伸手目标选择的共享注意力系统提供了证据。
