TY - JOUR
T1 - De novo motor learning of a bimanual control task over multiple days of practice
AU - Haith, Adrian M.
AU - Yang, Christopher S.
AU - Pakpoor, Jina
AU - Kita, Kahori
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by a Fellowship from the Link Foundation to C.S.Y.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 the American Physiological Society.
PY - 2022/10
Y1 - 2022/10
N2 - Although much research on motor learning has focused on how we adapt our movements to maintain performance in the face of imposed perturbations, in many cases, we must learn new skills from scratch or de novo. Compared with adaptation, relatively little is known about de novo learning. In part, this is because learning a new skill can involve many challenges, including learning to recognize new patterns of sensory input and generate new patterns of motor output. However, even with familiar sensory cues and well-practiced movements, the problem of quickly selecting the appropriate actions in response to the current state is challenging. Here, we devised a bimanual hand-to-cursor mapping that isolates this control problem. We find that participants initially struggled to control the cursor under this bimanual mapping, despite explicit knowledge of the mapping. Performance improved steadily over multiple days of practice, however. Participants exhibited no aftereffects when reverting to a veridical cursor, confirming that participants learned the new task de novo, rather than through adaptation. Corrective responses to midmovement perturbations of the target were initially weak, but with practice, participants gradually became able to respond rapidly and robustly to perturbations. After 4 days of practice, participants' behavior under the bimanual mapping almost matched performance using a veridically mapped cursor. However, there remained a small but persistent difference in performance level. Our findings illustrate the dynamics and limitations of learning a novel controller and introduce a promising paradigm for tractably investigating this aspect of motor skill learning.
AB - Although much research on motor learning has focused on how we adapt our movements to maintain performance in the face of imposed perturbations, in many cases, we must learn new skills from scratch or de novo. Compared with adaptation, relatively little is known about de novo learning. In part, this is because learning a new skill can involve many challenges, including learning to recognize new patterns of sensory input and generate new patterns of motor output. However, even with familiar sensory cues and well-practiced movements, the problem of quickly selecting the appropriate actions in response to the current state is challenging. Here, we devised a bimanual hand-to-cursor mapping that isolates this control problem. We find that participants initially struggled to control the cursor under this bimanual mapping, despite explicit knowledge of the mapping. Performance improved steadily over multiple days of practice, however. Participants exhibited no aftereffects when reverting to a veridical cursor, confirming that participants learned the new task de novo, rather than through adaptation. Corrective responses to midmovement perturbations of the target were initially weak, but with practice, participants gradually became able to respond rapidly and robustly to perturbations. After 4 days of practice, participants' behavior under the bimanual mapping almost matched performance using a veridically mapped cursor. However, there remained a small but persistent difference in performance level. Our findings illustrate the dynamics and limitations of learning a novel controller and introduce a promising paradigm for tractably investigating this aspect of motor skill learning.
KW - motor learning
KW - rapid motor responses
KW - reaching
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U2 - 10.1152/jn.00474.2021
DO - 10.1152/jn.00474.2021
M3 - Article
C2 - 36129208
AN - SCOPUS:85139739045
SN - 0022-3077
VL - 128
SP - 982
EP - 993
JO - Journal of neurophysiology
JF - Journal of neurophysiology
IS - 5
ER -