Fusion of Visual and Proprioceptive Information about Hand Position Prior to Movement

The problem whether movement accuracy is better in the full open-loop condition (FOL, hand never visible) than in the static closed-loop condition (SCL, hand only visible prior to movement onset) remains widely debated. To investigate this controversial question, we studied conditions for which visual information available to the subject prior to movement onset was strictly controlled. The results of our investigation showed that the accuracy improvement observed when human subjects were allowed to see their hand, in the peripheral visual field, prior to movement: (1) concerned only the variable errors; (2) did not depend on the simultaneous vision of the hand and target (hand and target viewed simultaneously vs sequentially); (3) remained significant when pointing to proprioceptive targets; and (4) was not suppressed when the visual information was temporally (visual presentation for less than 300 ms) or spatially (vision of only the index fingertip) restricted. In addition, dissociating vision and proprioception with wedge prisms showed that a weighed hand position was used to program hand trajectory.

When considered together, these results suggest that: (i) knowledge of the initial upper limb configuration or position is necessary to plan accurately goal-directed movements; (ii) static proprioceptive receptors are partially ineffective in providing an accurate estimate of the limb posture, and/or hand location relative to the body, and (iii) visual and proprioceptive information is not used in an exclusive way, but combined to furnish an accurate representation of the state of the effector prior to movement.