Eliminating Direction Specificity in Visuomotor Learning

Yin, Cong; Bi, Yuqing; Yu, Cong; Wei, Kunlin

doi:10.1523/jneurosci.2712-15.2016

Cited by 22 publications

(23 citation statements)

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“…Previous work has shown that learning a single gain perturbation at distal targets eliminates direction-specificity in rotation generalization, leading to rotation generalization across the entire workspace (Yin et al, 2016). It is unclear if this finding is consistent with a form of structural learning or a more general change in sensitivity to any form of visuomotor error.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural Learning in a Visuomotor Adaptation Task Is Explicitly Accessible

Bond

Taylor

2017

eNeuro

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Structural learning is a phenomenon characterized by faster learning in a new situation that shares features of previously experienced situations. One prominent example within the sensorimotor domain is that human participants are faster to counter a novel rotation following experience with a set of variable visuomotor rotations. This form of learning is thought to occur implicitly through the updating of an internal forward model, which predicts the sensory consequences of motor commands. However, recent work has shown that much of rotation learning occurs through an explicitly accessible process, such as movement re-aiming. We sought to determine if structural learning in a visuomotor rotation task is purely implicit (e.g., driven by an internal model) or explicitly accessible (i.e., re-aiming). We found that participants exhibited structural learning: following training with a variable set of rotations, they more quickly learned a novel rotation. This benefit was entirely conferred by the explicit re-aiming of movements. Implicit learning offered little to no contribution. Next, we investigated the specificity of this learning benefit by exposing participants to a novel perturbation drawn from a statistical structure either congruent or incongruent with their prior experience. We found that participants who experienced congruent training and test phase structure (i.e., rotations to rotation) learned more quickly than participants exposed to incongruent training and test phase structure (i.e., gains to rotation) and a control group. These results suggest that structural learning in a visuomotor rotation task is specific to previously experienced statistical structure and expressed via explicit re-aiming of movements.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural Learning in a Visuomotor Adaptation Task Is Explicitly Accessible

Bond

Taylor

2017

eNeuro

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“…The experimental setup had been used in our previous researches (Yin and Wei 2014; Wei et al 2014; Yin et al 2016; Jiang et al 2018). In all experiments, participants sat in front of a digitizing tablet and held the digital stylus with their left hand (Fig.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Proprioception is subject-specific and improved without performance feedback

Wang

Zhu

Kana

et al. 2019

Preprint

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21Accumulating evidence indicates that the human's proprioception map appears 22 subject-specific. However, whether the idiosyncratic pattern persists across time with 23 good within-subject consistency has not been quantitatively examined. Here we 24 measured the proprioception by a hand visual-matching task in multiple sessions over 25 two days. We found that people improved their proprioception when tested 26 repetitively without performance feedback. Importantly, despite the reduction of 27 average error, the spatial pattern of proprioception errors remained idiosyncratic. 28Based on individuals' proprioceptive performance, a standard convolutional neural 29 network classifier could identify people with good accuracy. We also found that 30 subjects' baseline proprioceptive performance could not predict their motor 31 performance in a visual trajectory-matching task even though both tasks require 32 accurate mapping of hand position to visual targets in the same workspace. Using a 33 separate experiment, we not only replicated these findings but also ruled out the 34 possibility that performance feedback during a few familiarization trials caused the 35 observed improvement in proprioception. We conclude that the conventional 36 proprioception test itself, even without feedback, can improve proprioception but 37 leave the idiosyncrasy of proprioception unchanged. 38 39 40 Keywords 41 Proprioception, kinaesthesia, visuomotor mapping, motor performance, motor 42 learning 43 44 45 72 4 73 However, to our knowledge, the subject-specificity of the proprioception map has 74 never been systematically examined. Many previous studies reached their conclusions 75 by eyeballing of data (Brown et al. 2003b; van den Dobbelsteen et al. 2004; Smeets et 76 al. 2006). Other studies calculated the within-subject correlation coefficients between 77 measurements from different conditions and found they were significantly larger than 78 zero (Wann and Ibrahim 1992; Desmurget et al. 2000). However, this kind of 79 correlation results only shows the similarity between conditions as opposed to the 80 idiosyncrasy of proprioception maps between subjects. A couple of studies computed 81 the within-subject correlation of proprioception maps and the between-subject 82 correlation, but they did not compare these correlations, possibly due to a limited 83 number of participants (Helms Tillery et al. 1994; Vindras et al. 1998; Rincon-84 Gonzalez et al. 2011). In sum, no previous study has quantitively examined the 85 idiosyncrasy of the proprioception map, leaving the question open about to what 86 extent one's proprioception map can be distinguished from others'. 87 88 Proprioception underlies motor performance in various tasks (Rosenbaum 2009). 89 Recent studies also found that motor learning and proprioceptive training could 90 benefit each other if these two tasks were similar. Proprioceptive training by passively 91 moving one's hand around a target circle could improve the subsequent motor 92 learning of drawing the target (Wong et...

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“…The experimental setup had been used in our previous research (He et al 2016;Wei et al 2014;Yin and Wei 2014;Yin et al 2016). Participants sat in front of a table and slid their right index fingertips on the desktop (Fig.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We hypothesize that motor learning might show a similar directional effect if learning is critically dependent on the saliency of perceptual signals. To test our hypothesis, we examine the generalization of visuomotor rotation adaptation using savings as the learning metric (Krakauer et al 2005;Yin et al 2016). Savings refers to the phenomenon that relearning is faster than the initial learning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visuomotor learning is dependent on direction-specific error saliency

Jiang

Yuan

Yin

et al. 2018

Journal of Neurophysiology

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People perceive better in cardinal directions compared with oblique ones. This directional effect, called oblique effect, has been documented in perception studies for a long time. However, typical motor studies do not differentiate learning in different directions. In this study we identify a significant directional effect in motor learning using visuomotor rotation paradigms. We find that adaptation to visual perturbations yields more savings when both initial learning and relearning are performed in cardinal directions than in oblique directions. We hypothesize that this directional effect arises from relatively higher error saliency in cardinal directions. Consistent with this hypothesis, we successfully increased savings in the oblique directions, which showed no saving effect before, by enhancing the error saliency with augmented visual feedback during learning. Our findings suggest that movement direction plays an important role in motor learning, especially when learning signals are direction specific. Our results also provide new insights about the role of motor errors in the formation and retrieval of motor memory and practical implications for promoting learning in motor rehabilitation and athletic training. NEW & NOTEWORTHY People perceive better when the stimulus is in cardinal directions than in oblique directions. Whether a similar directional effect exists in motor learning is unknown. Using a motor learning paradigm, we show that people relearn to compensate for a previously encountered perturbation faster when they move in cardinal directions than when they move in oblique directions. Further experimentation supports that this motor directional effect likely results from better sensory saliency of motor errors in cardinal directions.

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Eliminating Direction Specificity in Visuomotor Learning

Cited by 22 publications

References 50 publications

Structural Learning in a Visuomotor Adaptation Task Is Explicitly Accessible

Structural Learning in a Visuomotor Adaptation Task Is Explicitly Accessible

Proprioception is subject-specific and improved without performance feedback

Visuomotor learning is dependent on direction-specific error saliency

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