Sensorimotor prediction is used to direct gaze toward task-relevant locations in a goal-directed throwing task.

Previous research has shown that action effects of self-generated movements are internally predicted before outcome feedback becomes available. To test whether these sensorimotor predictions are used to facilitate visual information uptake for feedback processing, we measured eye movements during the execution of a goal-directed throwing task. Participants could fully observe the effects of their throwing actions (ball trajectory and either hitting or missing a target) in most of the trials.

A primitive-based representation of dance: modulations by experience and perceptual validity.

The generation of complex movements such as dance might be possible due to the utilization of movement building blocks, i.e., movement primitives.

The multisensory nature of human action imagery.

Imagination can appeal to all our senses and may, therefore, manifest in very different qualities (e.g., visual, tactile, proprioceptive, or kinesthetic).

Additional cognitive load decreases performance but not adaptation to a visuomotor transformation.

Dual-task paradigms are procedures for investigating interference with two tasks performed simultaneously. Studies that previously addressed dual-task paradigms within a visuomotor reaching task yielded mixed results. While some of the studies found evidence of cognitive interference, called dual-task costs, other studies did not.

Can Stephen Curry really know?-Conscious access to outcome prediction of motor actions.

The NBA player Stephen Curry has a habit of turning away from the basket right after taking three-point shots even before the ball reaches the basket, suggesting that he can reliably predict whether the just released shot will hit or not. In order to use this "knowledge" to deliberately decide which action to take next, Stephen Curry needs conscious access to the results of internal processes of outcome prediction and valuation. In general, computational simulations and empirical data suggest that the quality of such internal predictions is related to motor skill level.

Direct and indirect cues can enable dual adaptation, but through different learning processes.

Switching between motor tasks requires accurate adjustments for changes in dynamics (grasping a cup) or sensorimotor transformations (moving a computer mouse). Dual-adaptation studies have investigated how learning of context-dependent dynamics or transformations is enabled by sensory cues. However, certain cues, such as color, have shown mixed results.

End in view: Joint end-state comfort depends on gaze and extraversion.

This study investigated how humans adapt to a partner's movement in a joint pick-and-place task and examined the role of gaze behavior and personality traits in adapting to a partner. Two participants sitting side-by-side transported a cup from one end of a table to the other. The participant sitting on the left (the agent) moved the cup to an intermediate position from where the participant sitting on the right (the partner) transported it to a goal position with varying orientations.

Acting in Temporal Contexts: On the Behavioral and Neurophysiological Consequences of Feedback Delays.

Feedback on success or failure is critical to increase rewards through behavioral adaptation or learning of dependencies from trial and error. Learning from reward feedback is thereby treated as embedded in a reinforcement learning framework. Due to temporal discounting of reward, learning in this framework is suspected to be vulnerable to feedback delay.

Relevance of Predictive and Postdictive Error Information in the Course of Motor Learning.

The prediction of the sensory consequences of physical movements is a fundamental feature of the human brain. This function is attributed to a forward model, which generates predictions based on sensory and efferent information. The neural processes underlying such predictions have been studied using the error-related negativity (ERN) as a fronto-central event-related potential in electroencephalogram (EEG) tracings.

Focused Review on Neural Correlates of Different Types of Motor Errors and Related Terminological Issues.

The Error-related negativity (Ne/ERN) and the feedback-related negativity (FRN), two event-related potentials in electroencephalogram tracings, have been used to examine error processing in conscious actions. In the classical terminology the Ne/ERN and the FRN are differentiated with respect to whether internal (Ne/ERN) or external (FRN) error information is processed. In motor tasks, however, errors of different types can be made: A wrong action can be selected that is not adequate to achieve the task goal (or action effect), or the correctly selected action can be mis-performed such that the task goal might be missed (movement error).

Prolonged response time helps eliminate residual errors in visuomotor adaptation.

One persistent curiosity in visuomotor adaptation tasks is that participants often do not reach maximal performance. This incomplete asymptote has been explained as a consequence of obligatory computations within the implicit adaptation system, such as an equilibrium between learning and forgetting. A body of recent work has shown that in standard adaptation tasks, cognitive strategies operate alongside implicit learning.

Assessing explicit strategies in force field adaptation.

In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that a number of learning processes are at play in visuomotor adaptation tasks. In addition to implicitly adapting to a perturbation, learners can develop explicit knowledge allowing them to select better actions in responding to it. Advances in visuomotor rotation experiments have underscored the important role of such "explicit learning" in shaping adaptation to kinematic perturbations.

How different effectors and action effects modulate the formation of separate motor memories.

Humans can operate a variety of modern tools, which are often associated with different visuomotor transformations. Studies investigating this ability have shown that separate motor memories can be acquired implicitly when different sensorimotor transformations are associated with distinct (intended) postures or explicitly when abstract contextual cues are leveraged by aiming strategies. It still remains unclear how different transformations are remembered implicitly when postures are similar.

Predictive error processing distinguishes between relevant and irrelevant errors after visuomotor learning.

Error processing is an important aspect of learning. The detection and online correction of an error as well as error-based adaptation of subsequent movements enables humans to improve behavior. For this improvement, it is necessary to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant errors.

Motivational Modulation of Age-Related Effects on Reaching Adaptation.

Previous studies have provided consistent evidence that adaptation to visuomotor rotations during reaching declines with age. Since it has been recently shown that learning and retention components of motor adaptation are modulated by reward and punishment, we were interested in how motivational feedback affects age-related decline in reaching adaptation. We studied 35 young and 32 older adults in a reaching task which required fast shooting movements toward visual targets with their right hand.

Plan-based generalization shapes local implicit adaptation to opposing visuomotor transformations.

The human ability to use different tools demonstrates our capability of forming and maintaining multiple, context-specific motor memories. Experimentally, this has been investigated in dual adaptation, where participants adjust their reaching movements to opposing visuomotor transformations. Adaptation in these paradigms occurs by distinct processes, such as strategies for each transformation or the implicit acquisition of distinct visuomotor mappings.

Accuracy of Motor Error Predictions for Different Sensory Signals.

Detecting and evaluating errors in action execution is essential for learning. Through complex interactions of the inverse and the forward model, the human motor system can predict and subsequently adjust ongoing or subsequent actions. Inputs to such a prediction are efferent and afferent signals from various sources.

Gaze Behavior in a Natural Environment with a Task-Relevant Distractor: How the Presence of a Goalkeeper Distracts the Penalty Taker.

Gaze behavior in natural scenes has been shown to be influenced not only by top-down factors such as task demands and action goals but also by bottom-up factors such as stimulus salience and scene context. Whereas gaze behavior in the context of static pictures emphasizes spatial accuracy, gazing in natural scenes seems to rely more on where to direct the gaze involving both anticipative components and an evaluation of ongoing actions. Not much is known about gaze behavior in far-aiming tasks in which multiple task-relevant targets and distractors compete for the allocation of visual attention via gaze.

Perceiving animacy from shape.

Superordinate visual classification-for example, identifying an image as "animal," "plant," or "mineral"-is computationally challenging because radically different items (e.g., "octopus," "dog") must be grouped into a common class ("animal").

Impact of task difficulty on gaze behavior in a sequential object manipulation task.

Task difficulty affects both gaze behavior and hand movements. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate how task difficulty modulates gaze behaviour with respect to the balance between visually monitoring the ongoing action and prospectively collecting visual information about the future course of the ongoing action. For this, we examined sequences of reach and transport movements of water glasses that differed in task difficulty using glasses filled to different levels.

Brain negativity as an indicator of predictive error processing: the contribution of visual action effect monitoring.

The error (related) negativity (Ne/ERN) is an event-related potential in the electroencephalogram (EEG) correlating with error processing. Its conditions of appearance before terminal external error information suggest that the Ne/ERN is indicative of predictive processes in the evaluation of errors. The aim of the present study was to specifically examine the Ne/ERN in a complex motor task and to particularly rule out other explaining sources of the Ne/ERN aside from error prediction processes.

Task Integration Facilitates Multitasking.

The aim of this study was to investigate multi-task integration in a continuous tracking task. We were particularly interested in how manipulating task structure in a dual-task situation affects learning of a constant segment embedded in a pursuit-tracking task. Importantly, we examined if dual-task effects could be attributed to task integration by varying the structural similarity and difficulty of the primary and secondary tasks.

Feedback delay attenuates implicit but facilitates explicit adjustments to a visuomotor rotation.

We examined the effects of delaying terminal visual feedback on the relative contribution of explicit and implicit components of adaptation to a visuomotor rotation. Participants practiced a 30° rotation while receiving terminal visual feedback with either a short (0ms), medium (200ms), or long (1500ms) delay. Explicit and implicit adjustments were dissociated by a series of posttests.

Violating instructed human agency: An fMRI study on ocular tracking of biological and nonbiological motion stimuli.

Previous studies have shown that beliefs about the human origin of a stimulus are capable of modulating the coupling of perception and action. Such beliefs can be based on top-down recognition of the identity of an actor or bottom-up observation of the behavior of the stimulus. Instructed human agency has been shown to lead to superior tracking performance of a moving dot as compared to instructed computer agency, especially when the dot followed a biological velocity profile and thus matched the predicted movement, whereas a violation of instructed human agency by a nonbiological dot motion impaired oculomotor tracking (Zwickel et al.