Body and visual instabilities functionally modulate implicit reaching corrections

Naotoshi Abekawa; Kenji Doya; Hiroaki Gomi

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.105751

Body and visual instabilities functionally modulate implicit reaching corrections

iScience. 2022 Dec 6;26(1):105751. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105751. eCollection 2023 Jan 20.

Authors

Naotoshi Abekawa¹, Kenji Doya², Hiroaki Gomi¹

Affiliations

¹ NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Co., Kanawaga, 243-0198, Japan.
² Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Okinawa 904-0495, Japan.

Abstract

Hierarchical brain-information-processing schemes have frequently assumed that the flexible but slow voluntary action modulates a direct sensorimotor process that can quickly generate a reaction in dynamical interaction. Here we show that the quick visuomotor process for manual movement is modulated by postural and visual instability contexts that are related but remote and prior states to manual movements. A preceding unstable postural context significantly enhanced the reflexive manual response induced by a large-field visual motion during hand reaching while the response was evidently weakened by imposing a preceding random-visual-motion context. These modulations are successfully explained by the Bayesian optimal formulation in which the manual response elicited by visual motion is ascribed to the compensatory response to the estimated self-motion affected by the preceding contextual situations. Our findings suggest an implicit and functional mechanism that links the variability and uncertainty of remote states to the quick sensorimotor transformation.

Keywords: Cognitive neuroscience; Neuroscience; Sensory neuroscience.