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The Journal of Neuroscience, March 18, 2009, 29(11):3485-3496; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2374-08.2009

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Evidence for a Proprioception-Based Rapid On-Line Error Correction Mechanism for Hand Orientation during Reaching Movements in Blind Subjects

Nadia Gosselin-Kessiby,^1,4 John F. Kalaska,^1,3,4 and Julie Messier^2,5

¹Département de Physiologie, ²Département de Kinésiologie, ³Groupe de Recherche en Sciences Neurologiques (Canadian Institutes of Health Research), ⁴Groupe de Recherche sur le Système Nerveux Central (Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec), and ⁵Centre de Recherche Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie de Montréal, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3C 3J7

Correspondence should be addressed to John F. Kalaska, Département de Physiologie, Groupe de Recherche sur le Système Nerveux Central (Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec), Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3C 3J7. Email: kalaskaj{at}physio.umontreal.ca

The contribution of visual experience to the perception and sensorimotor control of spatial orientation of the hand was investigated in blind subjects. In "orientation-matching" tasks, subjects aligned a match handle held in their right hand to a target handle held in their left hand and fixed in different orientations, with both arms outstretched. In "letter-posting" task 1, the same subjects reached out and simultaneously oriented their right hand to insert the match handle into a target slot fixed in the same range of orientations. Orientations were signaled proprioceptively by a reference handle held in the left hand. Final hand orientation errors were smaller when blind subjects simultaneously reached out and rotated their hand to insert the match handle into the target slot in letter-posting task 1 than when they held their arm extended and aligned the handles in the orientation-matching task. In letter-posting task 2, blind subjects first aligned their hand to the orientation of the target and then subsequently reached to the target with the instruction to not change hand orientation during reaching. Despite the instruction, subjects showed a reduction in absolute hand orientation error from the beginning to the end of the reach. In all tasks, performance of blind subjects was very similar to that of blindfolded normally sighted subjects. These findings provide the first evidence of an automatic on-line error-correction mechanism for hand orientation guided only by proprioceptive inputs during reaching in blind subjects, and reveal that the on-line mechanism does not depend on prior visual experience.

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Received May 24, 2008; revised Oct. 12, 2008; accepted Feb. 12, 2009.

Correspondence should be addressed to John F. Kalaska, Département de Physiologie, Groupe de Recherche sur le Système Nerveux Central (Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec), Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3C 3J7. Email: kalaskaj{at}physio.umontreal.ca

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