Head position signal is crucial for preparing reaching movements because it contributes to specifying the position of body and target in space and relative to each other. However, it is unclear whether sensory information pertaining head position is used to control the movement after movement onset. In this study, nineteen participants performed discrete reaches towards a virtual target while neck vibration was randomly applied before and/or during the movement or not at all. The main dependent variable was the directional bias of the reaching finger. Neck vibration induced early leftward or late rightward trajectory biases. It appears that participants interpreted the sensed head shift as a target or an eye-in-head motion, which can be explained by individual differences in the use of reference frames. Nevertheless, body-centered and head-centered frames of reference appear to be important for the early and late stages of a goal-directed movement, respectively.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/30152 |
| Date | 01 December 2011 |
| Creators | Alekhina, Maria |
| Contributors | Tremblay, Luc |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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