Rand Miya K, Heuer Herbert
Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, TU Dortmund (IfADo), Dortmund, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2019 Feb 12;10:237. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00237. eCollection 2019.
The brain generally integrates a multitude of sensory signals to form a unified percept. Even in cursor control tasks, such as reaching while looking at rotated visual feedback on a monitor, visual information on cursor position and proprioceptive information on hand position are partially integrated (sensory coupling), resulting in mutual biases of the perceived positions of cursor and hand. Previous studies showed that the strength of sensory coupling (sum of the mutual biases) depends on the experience of kinematic correlations between hand movements and cursor motions, whereas the asymmetry of sensory coupling (difference between the biases) depends on the relative reliabilities (inverse of variability) of hand-position and cursor-position estimates (reliability rule). Furthermore, the precision of movement control and perception of hand position are known to differ between hands (left, right) and workspaces (ipsilateral, contralateral), and so does the experience of kinematic correlations from daily life activities. Thus, in the present study, we tested whether strength and asymmetry of sensory coupling for the endpoints of reaches in a cursor control task differ between the right and left hand and between ipsilateral and contralateral hemispace. No differences were found in the strength of sensory coupling between hands or between hemispaces. However, asymmetry of sensory coupling was less in ipsilateral than in contralateral hemispace: in ipsilateral hemispace, the bias of the perceived hand position was reduced, which was accompanied by a smaller variability of the estimates. The variability of position estimates of the dominant right hand was also less than for the non-dominant left hand, but this difference was not accompanied by a difference in the asymmetry of sensory coupling - a violation of the reliability rule, probably due a stronger influence of visual information on right-hand movements. According to these results, the long-term effects of the experienced kinematic correlation between hand movements and cursor motions on the strength of sensory coupling are generic and not specific for hemispaces or hands, whereas the effects of relative reliabilities on the asymmetry of sensory coupling are specific for hemispaces but not for hands.
大脑通常会整合大量的感觉信号以形成一个统一的感知。即使在光标控制任务中，比如在看着显示器上旋转的视觉反馈的同时伸手，关于光标位置的视觉信息和关于手部位置的本体感觉信息也会部分整合（感觉耦合），从而导致光标和手部感知位置的相互偏差。先前的研究表明，感觉耦合的强度（相互偏差之和）取决于手部运动和光标运动之间运动学相关性的经验，而感觉耦合的不对称性（偏差之间的差异）取决于手部位置和光标位置估计的相对可靠性（变异性的倒数）（可靠性规则）。此外，已知手部运动控制的精度和手部位置的感知在双手（左手、右手）和工作空间（同侧、对侧）之间存在差异，日常生活活动中的运动学相关性经验也是如此。因此，在本研究中，我们测试了在光标控制任务中伸手端点的感觉耦合强度和不对称性在右手和左手之间以及同侧和对侧半空间之间是否存在差异。双手之间或半空间之间在感觉耦合强度上未发现差异。然而，同侧半空间的感觉耦合不对称性小于对侧半空间：在同侧半空间中，感知到的手部位置偏差减小，同时估计的变异性也较小。优势右手的位置估计变异性也小于非优势左手，但这种差异并未伴随着感觉耦合不对称性的差异——这违反了可靠性规则，可能是由于视觉信息对右手运动的影响更强。根据这些结果，手部运动和光标运动之间经历的运动学相关性对感觉耦合强度的长期影响是普遍的，并非特定于半空间或手部，而相对可靠性对感觉耦合不对称性的影响则特定于半空间而非手部。
