Task context determines whether common or separate inhibitory signals underlie the control of eye-hand movements.

Abstract

Whereas inhibitory control of single effector movements has been widely studied, the control of coordinated eye-hand movements has received less attention. Nevertheless, previous studies have contradictorily suggested that either a common or separate signal/s is/are responsible for inhibition of coordinated eye-hand movements. In continuation of our previous study, we varied behavioral contexts and used a stochastic accumulation-to-threshold model, which predicts a scaling of the mean reaction time distribution with its variance, to study the inhibitory control of eye-hand movements. Participants performed eye-hand movements in different task conditions, and in each condition they had to redirect movements in a fraction of trials. Task contexts where the behavior could be best explained by a common initiation signal had similar error responses for eye and hand, despite having different mean reaction times, indicating a common inhibitory signal. In contrast, behavior that could be best explained by separate initiation signals had dissimilar error responses for eye and hand indicating separate inhibitory signals. These behavioral responses were further validated using electromyography and computational models having either a common or separate inhibitory control signal/s. Interestingly, in a particular context, whereas in majority trials a common initiation and inhibitory signal could explain the behavior, in a subset of trials separate initiation and inhibitory signals predicted the behavior better. This highlights the flexibility that exists in the brain and in effect reconciles the heterogeneous results reported by previous studies. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Prior studies have contradictorily suggested either a single or separate inhibitory signal/s underlying inhibition of coordinated eye-hand movements. With the use of different tasks, we observed that when eye-hand movements were initiated by a common signal, they were controlled by a common inhibitory signal. However, when the two effectors were initiated by separate signals, they were controlled by separate inhibitory signals. This highlights the flexible control of eye-hand movements and reconciles the heterogeneous results previously reported in the literature.