Goal uncertainty attenuates sensorimotor adaptation
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Implicit sensorimotor adaptation—the automatic correction of movement errors through feedback and practice—is driven by a perceptual prediction error, the mismatch between the perceived movement outcome and its intended goal. While perceptual uncertainty is known to attenuate adaptation, the impact of goal uncertainty on adaptation remains unknown. We employed a visuomotor adaptation task that isolates implicit adaptation (N = 180), manipulating goal uncertainty by varying how precisely the goal’s midpoint could be identified. Display format was varied independently to control for the objective size of visual features, and targets were hidden at movement onset, ensuring identical visual input at the moment the error was experienced. We found that goal uncertainty significantly attenuated implicit adaptation, independent of low-level visual and kinematic features. Together, these results demonstrate that a precise internal representation of the goal is essential for supporting implicit sensorimotor adaptation.
Source: Journal of Neurophysiology
Authors: Sritej Padmanabhan, Reza Shadmehr, Roberta Klatzky, Jonathan S. Tsay
Institutions: Carnegie Mellon University, Johns Hopkins University
Language: English
Topic: Motor Control and Adaptation
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4416758182