Abstract
Perception of temporal synchrony between one’s own action and the sensory feedback of that action is quite flexible. We examined whether sensorimotor temporal recalibration (TR) involves central or motor-specific components by concurrently exposing the left and right hands to different lags. The experiment was composed of a pre-test, an adaptation phase, and a post-test. During the adaptation phase, participants tapped their left and right index fingers in alternating fashion while each tap induced an auditory feedback signal (a short click sound). One hand was exposed to a long delay between the tap and the sound (~150 ms), while the other hand was exposed to a subjective no-delay (~50 ms). Before and after the adaptation phase (the pre- and post-test), participants tried to tap in synchrony with pacer tones (ISI = 1000 ms). The results showed that the hand that was exposed to the delayed sound corrected for this delay by tapping earlier (a larger anticipation error) than the no-delay hand, indicating TR. Different amounts of TR were found when the left and right hand were concurrently exposed to the same versus different delays. With different exposure- delays for the two hands, there was a TR even for the hand that did not experience any delay in the feedback signal. However, it is not the case with the same exposure delay for the two hands. TR of the hand that experienced delayed feedback also occurred faster and was more complete (~40% greater than that of the hand with no subjective delay) if the two hands were exposed to the same rather than different delays (~20% greater than that of the hand with no subjective delay). These results suggest the existence of cross-talk between the hands, where both central and motor-specific components might be involved.
Highlights
All temporal recalibration effect (TRE) were, as expected, negative meaning that the anticipation tendency became greater after exposure to delayed and non-delayed feedback in voluntary tapping
With previous studies (Sugano et al, 2012), results showed that the tap-asynchrony became greater after exposure to delayed feedback, presumably because participants shifted their motor timing or the perceived timing of the sensory signal to compensate for the delay
When the left and right hands were concurrently exposed to different delays, each hand displayed a different amount of TRE
Summary
Perception of temporal synchrony between one’s own action (e.g., tapping) and a sensory feedback following the action (e.g., a flash or a tone) can be flexibly changed after prolonged exposure of an artificially induced temporal delay of the sensory feedback, which sometimes leads to a reversed sensation of the cause-effect relationship (Cunningham et al, 2001; Stetson et al, 2006; Heron et al, 2009; Sugano et al, 2010, 2012; Stekelenburg et al, 2011; Keetels and Vroomen, 2012) This remarkable flexibility of sensorimotor timing is often explained by the concept of temporal recalibration (TR; Fujisaki et al, 2004; Vroomen et al, 2004). Support for this concept comes from studies showing that sensorimotor TR readily transfers between sensory modalities (Heron et al, 2009; Sugano et al, 2010), and transfers from learned to novel tasks (Fujisaki et al, 2004; Pesavento and Schlag, 2006)
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