Learning of scaling factors and reference axes for reaching movements

Abstract

To further understand visuomotor transformations in reaching, we compared adaptation to display rotation and altered gain in planar movements. Healthy subjects moved a cursor on a screen by moving an indicator on a horizontal digitizing tablet with their unseen hand. Adaptation to rotation was less complete and was accompanied by markedly increased directional variability. Adaptation training on a single target generalized broadly for gain change, but poorly for rotation. We propose that the difficulty in adapting to rotation arises from the substantial demands on short-term working memory imposed by the need to determine the new reference direction. Adaptation to gain change makes more modest demands on short-term memory to recalibrate the visuomotor scaling factor.