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Independent selection of eye and hand targets suggests effector-specific attentional mechanisms.

ABSTRACT: Both eye and hand movements bind visual attention to their target locations during movement preparation. However, it remains contentious whether eye and hand targets are selected jointly by a single selection system, or individually by independent systems. To unravel the controversy, we investigated the deployment of visual attention - a proxy of motor target selection - in coordinated eye-hand movements. Results show that attention builds up in parallel both at the eye and the hand target. Importantly, the allocation of attention to one effector's motor target was not affected by the concurrent preparation of the other effector's movement at any time during movement preparation. This demonstrates that eye and hand targets are represented in separate, effector-specific maps of action-relevant locations. The eye-hand synchronisation that is frequently observed on the behavioral level must emerge from mutual influences of the two effector systems at later, post-attentional processing stages.

SUBMITTER: Hanning NM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6013452 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Independent selection of eye and hand targets suggests effector-specific attentional mechanisms.

Hanning Nina M NM Aagten-Murphy David D Deubel Heiner H

Scientific reports 20180621 1

Both eye and hand movements bind visual attention to their target locations during movement preparation. However, it remains contentious whether eye and hand targets are selected jointly by a single selection system, or individually by independent systems. To unravel the controversy, we investigated the deployment of visual attention - a proxy of motor target selection - in coordinated eye-hand movements. Results show that attention builds up in parallel both at the eye and the hand target. Impo ...[more]

PMID: 29930389

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Project description:It is widely accepted that cerebral pathology can impair ocular motor and manual motor control. This is true in indolent and chronic processes, such as neurodegeneration and in acute processes such as stroke or those secondary to neurotrauma. More recently, it has been suggested that disruptions in these control systems are useful markers for prognostication and longitudinal monitoring. The utility of examining the relationship or the coupling between these systems has yet to be determined. We measured eye and hand-movement control in chronic, middle cerebral artery stroke, relative to healthy controls, in saccade-to-reach paradigms to assess eye-hand coordination. Primary saccades were initiated significantly earlier by stroke participants relative to control participants. However, despite these extremely early initial saccades to the target, reaches were nevertheless initiated at approximately the same time as those of control participants. Control participants minimized the time period between primary saccade onset and reach initiation, demonstrating temporal coupling between eye and hand. In about 90% of all trials, control participants produced no secondary, or corrective, saccades, instead maintaining fixation in the terminal position of the primary saccade until the end of the reach. In contrast, participants with stroke increased the time period between primary saccade onset and reach initiation. During this temporal decoupling, multiple saccades were produced in about 50% of the trials with stroke participants making between one and five additional saccades. Reaches made by participants with stroke were both longer in duration and less accurate. In addition to these increases in spatial reach errors, there were significant increases in saccade endpoint errors. Overall, the magnitude of the endpoint errors for reaches and saccades were correlated across participants. These findings suggest that in individuals with otherwise intact visual function, the spatial and temporal relationships between the eye and hand are disrupted poststroke, and may need to be specifically targeted during neurorehabilitation. Eye-hand coupling may be a useful biomarker in individuals with cerebral pathology in the setting of neurovascular, neurotraumatic, and neurodegenerative pathology.

Dataset Information

Independent selection of eye and hand targets suggests effector-specific attentional mechanisms.

Publications

Independent selection of eye and hand targets suggests effector-specific attentional mechanisms.

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