Visuomotor information drives interference between the hands more than dynamic motor information during bimanual reaching

Abstract

During complex bimanual movements, interference can occur in the form of one hand influencing the action of the contralateral hand. Interference likely results from conflicting sensorimotor information shared between brain regions controlling hand movements via neural crosstalk. However, how visual and force-related feedback processes interact with each other during bimanual reaching is not well understood. In this study, four groups experienced either a visuomotor perturbation, dynamic perturbation, combined visuomotor and dynamic perturbation, or no perturbation in their right hand during bimanual reaches, with each hand controlling its own cursor. The left hand was examined for interference as a consequence of the right-hand perturbation. The results indicated that the visuomotor and combined perturbations showed greater interference in the left hand than the dynamic perturbation, but that the combined and visuomotor perturbations were equivalent. This suggests that dynamic sensorimotor and visuomotor processes do not interact between hemisphere-hand systems, and that primarily visuomotor processes lead to interference between the hands.