Eye-Hand Synergy and Intermittent Behaviors during Target-Directed Tracking with Visual and Non-visual Information

Abstract

Visual feedback and non-visual information play different roles in tracking of an external target. This study explored the respective roles of the visual and non-visual information in eleven healthy volunteers who coupled the manual cursor to a rhythmically moving target of 0.5 Hz under three sensorimotor conditions: eye-alone tracking (EA), eye-hand tracking with visual feedback of manual outputs (EH tracking), and the same tracking without such feedback (EHM tracking). Tracking error, kinematic variables, and movement intermittency (saccade and speed pulse) were contrasted among tracking conditions. The results showed that EHM tracking exhibited larger pursuit gain, less tracking error, and less movement intermittency for the ocular plant than EA tracking. With the vision of manual cursor, EH tracking achieved superior tracking congruency of the ocular and manual effectors with smaller movement intermittency than EHM tracking, except that the rate precision of manual action was similar for both types of tracking. The present study demonstrated that visibility of manual consequences altered mutual relationships between movement intermittency and tracking error. The speed pulse metrics of manual output were linked to ocular tracking error, and saccade events were time-locked to the positional error of manual tracking during EH tracking. In conclusion, peripheral non-visual information is critical to smooth pursuit characteristics and rate control of rhythmic manual tracking. Visual information adds to eye-hand synchrony, underlying improved amplitude control and elaborate error interpretation during oculo-manual tracking.

Investigating three types of continuous auditory feedback in visuo-manual tracking

“…Changes in tracking gain, temporal lag or tracking error between target and pointer trajectories are measurable evidence of these improvements (Huang and Hwang, 2012). Visuo-manual coordination in tracking tasks is often considered to be controlled by a combination of feed-forward and feedback adaptive internal models (Neilson et al, 1988;Miall et al, 1993;Shams and Seitz, 2008).…”

“…For example, Effenberg (Effenberg, 2004) proposed to use sound feedback to enhance movement perception. Kagerer and Contreras-Vidal describes particular phenomenons using auditory-motor transformations (Kagerer and Contreras-Vidal, 2009). They observed that the auditory-motor space can be affected by a newly formed internal model built consequently after a visuo-motor perturbation during a reaching task.…”

Sensorimotor Control of Tracking Movements at Various Speeds for Stroke Patients as Well as Age-Matched and Young Healthy Subjects

“…Sosnoff et al [ 15 ] and Baweja et al [ 12 ] detected the effects of the level and frequency of display information on feedback control during force tracking tasks. Huang and Hwang explored the control pathway during tracking motions with or without visual information [ 13 ]. Gritsenko et al [ 6 ] and Lee et al [ 14 ] investigated the ability of adaption to the disturbance of the target jump or rotation during reaching tasks and confirmed the integration of both feedforward and feedback control.…”

Trajectory Adjustments Underlying Task-Specific Intermittent Force Behaviors and Muscular Rhythms

“…3A, 3B), physically in accordance with the wider spectral spreads in high frequency of the force intermittency profile. Dynamic force-tracking in the shorter time scale was more informative, probably because the force tracking system adapted the required force output to multiple changing sensory inputs from the periphery to remedy tracking deviations in a short interval [33]. However, force intermittency of dynamic force-tracking in the high time scale 26–60 were conversely more regular (smaller MSE area) than those of static force-tracking (Figs.…”

“…Under the framework of sampled movement control [10], [11], [12], force pulses in a force intermittency profile are centrally-scalable, superimposed onto the primary movement to tune a force trajectory [24], [26], [27]. Since dynamic tracking produced larger force intermittency and a smaller R PM/FI ratio than did static force-tracking (Table 1), dynamic force-tracking weighs more heavily on the error-correction process, entailing more intensive integration of proprioceptive and visual inputs than does static tracking [33]. Also, corrective adjustments to dynamic force-tracking were more frequent in order to generate motor commands in shorter time scales, on account of the higher number of high-frequency components with greater spectral dispersion in the force intermittency profile (Figs.…”