Abstract
Both eye and hand movements have been shown to selectively interfere with visual working memory. We investigated working memory in the context of simultaneous eye-hand movements to approach the question whether the eye and the hand movement systems independently interact with visual working memory. Participants memorized several locations and performed eye, hand, or simultaneous eye-hand movements during the maintenance interval. Subsequently, we tested spatial working memory at the eye or the hand motor goal, and at action-irrelevant locations. We found that for single eye and single hand movements, memory at the eye or hand target was significantly improved compared to action-irrelevant locations. Remarkably, when an eye and a hand movement were prepared in parallel, but to distinct locations, memory at both motor targets was enhanced—with no tradeoff between the two separate action goals. This suggests that eye and hand movements independently enhance visual working memory at their goal locations, resulting in an overall working memory performance that is higher than that expected when recruiting only one effector.
Highlights
When an eye and a hand movement were performed while maintaining spatial information, working memory performance at both motor targets was improved—approximately as much as if just a single eye or hand movement was made
As the memory benefit at one effector’s movement target was unaffected by the concurrent movement preparation of the other effector, we conclude that eye and hand movements independently of each other enhance working memory
Visuospatial working memory is assumed to rely on recurrent feedback between prefrontal and posterior cortices (Hale et al, 1996; Chafee and Goldman-Rakic, 2000), and it has been hypothesized that this feedback activity is influenced by motor actions like eye or hand movements (Lawrence et al, 2001)
Summary
Eye and hand movements have been shown to bind visual attention to their goal locations during movement preparation (Kowler et al, 1995; Deubel and Schneider, 1996; Deubel et al, 1998; Rolfs et al, 2013), and it has been suggested that the underlying attentional mechanisms are effectorspecific and independent (Jonikaitis and Deubel, 2011; Perry et al, 2016; Hanning et al, 2018), i.e., the attentional benefit at one effector’s movement target is not affected by the concurrent movement preparation of the other effector Both eye (Bays and Husain, 2008; Hanning et al, 2016; Ohl and Rolfs, 2017) and hand movements (Heuer et al, 2017) selectively enhance visual working memory at their action goals, presumably due to the associated deployment of attention (Hanning et al, 2016). If eye and hand movements independently of each other enhance working memory at their target locations, any memory benefit observed at the eye target should not be affected by the concurrent preparation of a hand movement, and vice versa
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