Spatiotemporal Coupling between Eye and Hand Trajectories during Curved Hand Movements. Issue 1 (2nd January 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Jana, Sumitash; Murthy, Aditya
• Is Part Of: Journal of motor behavior. Volume 53:Issue 1(2021)
• Page Start: 47
• Page End: 58
• Publication Date: 2021-01-02
• Subjects: Eye-hand coordination -- online correction -- sub-movements; Human mechanics -- Periodicals; Movement, Psychology of -- Periodicals; Motor Activity -- Periodicals; Motor Skills -- Periodicals; Bewegingsleer; Mécanique humaine -- Périodiques; Psychomotricité -- Périodiques; 612.705
• DOI: 10.1080/00222895.2020.1723481
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0022-2895

Abstract

Abstract: Eye and hand movements are often made in isolation but for reaching movements they are usually coupled. Despite this, evidence for spatial coupling between the eye and hand effector is mixed and have usually been restricted to straight-line movements, while real-world hand movements have complex trajectories. Here, using a novel obstacle avoidance task where an obstacle appeared in an infrequent number of trials, we establish a stronger link between the saccade and hand trajectory during more naturalistic curved hand trajectories. We illustrate that the hand trajectory was coupled to the end-point of the saccade which was executed just prior to the hand movement onset. Interestingly, while the saccade end-point was related to whether the hand trajectory followed a straight or a curved path, the y-component of saccade end-point was related to whether the hand took a path passing from over or below the obstacle. Further, we observed a relationship between saccade locations and hand sub-movements where the number and timing of saccades and number of hand velocity peaks were related. These results illustrate a robust spatiotemporal and kinematic coupling between saccades and complex hand movement trajectories suggesting a shared kinematic representation underlying eye-hand movements.