Intermanual transfer effects in sequential tactuomotor learning: Evidence for effector independent coding

Abstract

Results from our earlier brain imaging studies regarding motor learning have shown different areas activated during naive and practiced performance. When right handed participants moved a pen either with the dominant or non-dominant hand continuously through a cut-out maze as quickly and accurately as possible, practice resulted in decreased brain activity in right premotor and parietal areas as well as left cerebellum, while increased activity was found in the supplementary motor area (SMA). These lateralized practiced-related changes in brain activation suggest effector-independent abstract coding of information. To test this hypothesis more extensively, intermanual transfer of learning was examined in 24 male and female participants (12 right- and 12 left-handed) using the same maze-learning task. It was hypothesized that if an abstract representation of the movement is learned and stored, intermanual transfer effects should be more pronounced when participants transferred to a same maze as opposed to a mirror image of the maze. Errors and velocity were measured during the following conditions: initial naive performance (Naive); after practice on the maze (Prac); during intermanual transfer to the same maze (Transfer Identical); and to the mirror maze (Transfer Mirror). Transfer direction was tested from the dominant to non-dominant hand and vice versa. No significant differences were found between right- and left-handed participants, males and females, and transfer directions. However, intermanual transfer of learning was significantly greater to the identical maze as opposed to the mirror maze. These results showed that learning was indeed taking place at an abstract effector independent level.

Human Motor Plasticity Induced by Mirror Visual Feedback

“…Although intermanual transfer was observed previously (Halsband, 1992;Criscimagna-Hemminger et al, 2003;van Mier and Petersen, 2006;Wang et al, 2011), it was not found in the nonmirror task of the present study. This might have been because asymmetrical intermanual transfer occurred instead when using the symmetric mirror motor task (Kirsch and Hoffmann, 2010).…”

Generalized movement representation in haptic perception.

“…Effector-independent movement coding has been observed in the case of transfer learning experiments (Grafton, Hazeltine, & Ivry, 1998;Swinnen et al, 2010;van Mier & Petersen, 2006). Our results show that an effector-independent representation is likewise used in haptic perception.…”

Intermanual Transfer of Learning in a Fine Manual Skill Task

“…While some researches convey the absence of significant differences between genders 7,20,26 , other studies establish an interaction between age and gender 27,28 . A research from Santos 28 demonstrates that while in the youngest group female gender has got higher IMTL values than the male gender, in the oldest group the opposite was found.…”

“…Some authors suggest that the process of transfer is symmetric (e.g. Stockel & Weigelt 6 van Mier & Petersen 7 ), others report a transfer behavior as being mainly asymmetric (e.g. Kumar & Mandal 8 ; Redding & Wallace 9 ).…”