Motor adaptation distorts visual space

Irene Petrizzo; Giovanni Anobile; Roberto Arrighi

doi:10.1016/j.visres.2020.04.007

Motor adaptation distorts visual space

Vision Res. 2020 May 1:171:31-35. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2020.04.007. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Irene Petrizzo¹, Giovanni Anobile², Roberto Arrighi¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Pharmacology and Child Health, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
² Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Pharmacology and Child Health, University of Florence, Florence, Italy. Electronic address: giovannianobile@hotmail.it.

PMID: 32371224
DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2020.04.007

Abstract

It has been suggested that the human visual system exploits an adaptable metric to implement a precise but plastic spatial representation. Indeed, adapting to a dense dot-texture reduces the apparent separation of subsequently presented dots pairs. Whether this metric is purely visual or shared between senses is still unknown. Here we present a new cross-modal after-effect revealing that the metric with which the visual system computes the relative spatial position of objects is shared with the motor system. A few seconds of mid-air self-produced tapping movements (adaptation) yielded a robust compression of the apparent separation of dot pairs subsequently displayed around the tapping region. This visuo-motor spatial metric could reflect an efficient functional architecture to program and execute actions aimed at efficient interaction with the objects in the environment.

Keywords: Adaptation; Cross-modal perception; Motor adaptation; Space perception.