Skill level, vision, and proprioception in simple one-hand catching

Two experiments examined the interaction of vision and articular proprioception in simple one-hand catching. In Experiment 1 (N = 18) skilled baseball and softball players used the left and right hands to catch slowly moving tennis balls, while Experiment 2 (N = 16) used novice catchers as subjects. In half the trials, sight of the catching hand was prevented by placing a screen alongside the subjects' face. Results of Experiment 1 revealed that the screen caused minimal disruption of the positioning phase of the catch, with moderate disruption of the grasping phase. However, for the unskilled subjects of Experiment 2, the screen caused considerable disruption of positioning. The data provide only minimal support for Smyth and Marriott' (1982) contention that limb position is inadequately specified by articular proprioception. It is argued that skill level serves as a mediator in the ability to use proprioception for limb positioning, but vision appears necessary to control the precise temporal organization of the grasp phase of one-hand catching.     

The case for proprioception

In formulating a theory of perception that does justice to the embodied and enactive nature of perceptual experience, proprioception can play a valuable role. Since proprioception is necessarily embodied, and since proprioceptive experience is particularly integrated with one’s bodily actions, it seems clear that proprioception, in addition to, e.g., vision or audition, can provide us with valuable insights into the role of an agent’s corporal skills and capacities in constituting or structuring perceptual experience. However, if we are going to have the opportunity to argue from analogy with proprioception to vision, audition, touch, taste, or smell, then it is necessary to eschew any doubts about the legitimacy of proprioception’s inclusion into the category of perceptual modalities. To this end, in this article, I (1) respond to two arguments that Shaun Gallagher (2003) presents in “Bodily self-awareness and objectperception” against proprioception’s ability to meet the criteria of object perception, (2) present a diagnosis of Gallagher’s position by locating a misunderstanding in the distinction between proprioceptive information and proprioceptive awareness, and (3) show that treating proprioception as a perceptual modality allows us to account for the interaction of proprioception with the other sensory modalities, to apply the lessons we learn from proprioception to the other sensory modalities, and to account for proprioceptive learning. Finally, (4) I examine Sydney Shoemaker’s (1994) identification constraint and suggest that a full-fledged notion of object-hood is unnecessary to ground a theory of perception.     

Skill Level,Vision, and Proprioception in Simple One-Hand Catching

Two experiments examined the interaction of vision and articular proprioception in simple one-hand catching. In Experiment 1 (N = 18) skilled baseball and Softball players used the left and right hands to catch slowly moving tennis balls, while Experiment 2(N = 16) used novice catchers as subjects. In half the trials, sight of the catching hand was prevented by placing a screen alongside the subjects’ face. Results of Experiment 1 revealed that the screen caused minimal disruption of the positioning phase of the catch, with moderate disruption of the grasping phase. However, for the unskilled subjects of Experiment 2, the screen caused considerable disruption of positioning. The data provide only minimal support for Smyth and Marriott’s (1982) contention that limb position is inadequately specified by articular proprioception. It is argued that skill level serves as a mediator in the ability to use proprioception for limb positioning, but vision appears necessary to control the precise temporal organization of the grasp phase of one-hand catching.     

Proprioception in somatoform disorders

20 patients with somatoform disorders as defined by DSM-IV and 20 healthy controls were examined for their proprioception. Several psychophysiological theories of somatoform disorders suggest biased proprioceptive abilities. The primary question is, whether we may find an inaccurate myogen perception in somatization as suggested by the approach of Bischoff [Wahrnehmung der Muskelspannung (Perception of muscle tension) Gottingen: Hogrefe (1989)] or a more precise proprioception as may be derived from concepts of a higher awareness of body reactions [e.g. Barksky, A. J. (1992) Amplification, somatization, and the somatoform disorders. Psychosomatics, 39, 28–34; Salkovskis, P. M., & Clark, D. M. (1993) Panic disorder and hypochondiasis. Adv. Res. Ther. 15, 23–48]. Furthermore it is expected, that somatoform patients perceive their muscle tension more intensely than do healthy subjects. Proprioceptive abilities were tested using a visual EMG biofeedback task. Resulting objective data and subjective ratings were analyzed within a psychophysiological regression approach which allows one to estimate the reliability, precision and intensity of proprioception. Results revealed that somatoform subjects demonstrated a more precise but not a more intense perception of muscle tension than did healthy controls.     

Locomotor experience affects self and emotion

Two studies investigated the role of locomotor experience on visual proprioception in 8-month-old infants. Visual proprioception refers to the sense of self-motion induced in a static person by patterns of optic flow. A moving room apparatus permitted displacement of an entire enclosure (except for the floor) or the side walls and ceiling. In Study 1, creeping infants and prelocomotor/walker infants showed significantly greater postural compensation and emotional responses to side wall movement than did same-age prelocomotor infants. Study 2 used true random assignment of prelocomotor infants to locomotor-training (via a powered-mobility device) and no-training conditions. Experimental infants showed powerful effects of locomotor training. These results imply that locomotor experience is playing a causal role in the ontogeny of visual proprioception.     

Balance,Proprioception, and Gross Motor Development of Chinese Children Aged 3 to 6 Years

The authors' aim was to find the features of balance, proprioception, and gross motor development of Chinese children 3–6 years old and their correlations, provide theoretical support for promoting children's motor development, and enrich the world theoretical system of motor development. This study used a Tekscan foot pressure measurement instrument (Tekscan, Inc., Boston, MA), walking on a balance beam, Xsens 3-dimensional positional measuring system (Xsens Technologies, Enschede, the Netherlands), and Test of Gross Motor Development-2 to assess static balance, dynamic balance, knee proprioception, and levels of gross motor development (GMD) of 3- to 6-year-old children (n = 60) in Beijing. The results are as follows: children had significant age differences in static balance, dynamic balance, proprioception, and levels of GMD; children had significant gender differences in static balance, proprioception, and levels of GMD; children's static balance, dynamic balance, and proprioception had a very significant positive correlation with GMD (p < .01), but no significant correlation with body mass index.     

Sensory conflict in judgments of spatial direction

Artificial discrepancy was created between information about azimuth coming from different sense modalities. The resolution of this discrepancy was examined for the cases of vision and proprioception, proprioception and audition, and vision and audition. Vision biases proprioceptive and auditory judgments. Proprioception biases auditory judgments and has a small effect on visual judgments. The results suggest that the combinations of sense modalities do not behave as an integrated system and the data are interpreted as indicating that different processes are involved in the resolution of discrepant directional information from different pairs of modalities.     

Some visual influences on human postural equilibrium: binocular versus monocular fixation

The importance of vision for postural equilibrium has long been known; traditionally, this visual contribution to the control of posture has been analyzed primarily in terms of optical and retinal phenomena. Recently, however, there has been some suggestion that binocular and monocular fixation of identical stimuli have differential effects. Three experiments were conducted in order to measure self-generated movement (sway during quiet standing) of the body's center of gravity while field structure, ankle proprioception, and binocular/monocular fixation were varied. Field structure was varied from total darkness, to the presence of single and multiple LEDs in the dark, to full field structure (i.e., the richness of the feed back information was varied). Ankle proprioception was varied by changing foot position from side-by-side to heel-to-toe positions. Results indicate that (1) ankle-joint input is a significant factor in reducing sway, (2) binocular fixation attenuates sway relative to monocular fixation, under otherwise identical visual conditions, and (3) this difference persists in total darkness. Taken together, the data indicate that the visual influence on postural equilibrium results from a complex synergy that receives multimodal inputs. A simple optical/retinal explanation is not sufficient.     

Face proprioception does not modulate access to visual awareness of emotional faces in a continuous flash suppression paradigm

An important question in neuroscience is which multisensory information, presented outside of awareness, can influence the nature and speed of conscious access to our percepts. Recently, proprioceptive feedback of the hand was reported to lead to faster awareness of congruent hand images in a breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS) paradigm. Moreover, a vast literature suggests that spontaneous facial mimicry can improve emotion recognition, even without awareness of the stimulus face. However, integration of visual and proprioceptive information about the face to date has not been tested with CFS. The modulation of visual awareness of emotional faces by facial proprioception was investigated across three separate experiments. Face proprioception was induced with voluntary facial expressions or with spontaneous facial mimicry. Frequentist statistical analyses were complemented with Bayesian statistics. No evidence of multisensory integration was found, suggesting that proprioception does not modulate access to visual awareness of emotional faces in a CFS paradigm.     

Can a space-perception conflict be solved with three sense modalities?

A cross-modal conflict over location was resolved in an unexpected way. When vision and proprioception provide conflicting information, which modality should dominate is ambiguous. A visual-proprioceptive conflict was created with a prism and, to logically disambiguate the problem, auditory information was added that either agreed with vision (group 1), agreed with proprioception (group 2), or was absent (group 3). While a scarcity of research addresses the interaction of three modalities, I predicted error should be attributed to the modality in the minority. Instead, the opposite was found: adaptation consisted of a large change in arm proprioception and a small change affecting vision in group 2, and the reverse in group 1. Group 1 was not different than group 3. Findings suggested adaptation to separate two-way conflicts, possibly influenced by direction of attention, rather than a direct solution to a three-way modality problem.     

The effects of trunk extensor and abdominal muscle fatigue on postural control and trunk proprioception in young,healthy individuals

The purpose of this study was to induce both trunk extensor and abdominal muscle fatigue, on separate occasions, and compare their effects on standing postural control and trunk proprioception, as well as look at the effects of a recovery period on these outcome measures. A total of 20 individuals participated, with 10 (5 males and 5 females) completing either a standing postural control or lumbar axial repositioning protocol. Participants completed their randomly assigned protocol on two occasions, separated by at least 4 days, with either their trunk extensor or abdominal muscles being fatigued on either day. Postural control centre of pressure variables and trunk proprioception errors were compared pre- and post-fatigue. Results showed that both trunk extensor and abdominal muscle fatigue significantly degraded standing postural control immediately post-fatigue, with recovery occurring within 2 min post-fatigue. In general, these degradative effects on postural control appeared to be greater when the trunk extensor muscles were fatigued compared to the abdominal muscles. No statistically significant changes in trunk proprioception were found after either fatigue protocol. The present findings demonstrate our body’s ability to quickly adapt and reweight somatosensory information to maintain postural control and trunk proprioception, as well as illustrate the importance of considering the abdominal muscles, along with the trunk extensor muscles, when considering the impact of fatigue on trunk movement and postural control.     

A simple method to stand outside oneself

Here we outline a simple method of using two mirrors which allows one to stand outside oneself. This method demonstrates that registration of vision with touch and proprioception is crucial for the perception of the corporeal self. Our method may also allow the disassociation of taste from touch, proprioception, and movement.     

The role of proprioception in action recognition

This study aimed at evaluating the role of proprioception in the process of matching the final position of one's limbs with an intentional movement. Two experiments were realised with the same paradigm of conscious recognition of one's own limb position from a distorted position. In the first experiment, 22 healthy subjects performed the task in an active and in a passive condition. In the latter condition, proprioception was the only available information since the central signals related to the motor command were likely to be absent. The second experiment was realised with a deafferented patient who suffers from a complete haptic deafferentation, including loss of proprioception. The results first argue in favour of a dominant role of proprioception in action recognition, but they also stress the possible role of central signals. The process of matching the final position of one's limbs with an intended movement and thus of action recognition would be achieved through a comparison process between the predicted sensory consequences of the action, which are stored in its internal model, and the actual sensory consequences of that action.     

Perceptual distortion of intrapersonal and near-personal space sensed by proprioception

It is known that the illusory displacement of a vibrated limb can be transferred to a nonvibrated contacted limb. The purpose of this study was to quantify and compare the transferred illusory displacements occurring in the intrapersonal and near-personal space. In two tasks, 8 male and 8 female blindfolded subjects estimated (1) the height of the left elbow and (2) the height of an external object located at the same height as the left elbow, by the proprioception of the right arm which was Subject to illusory displacement. If the internal representation of the left elbow in one's body schema could provide precise information of its static position independently of the proprioception of the right arm, the perceived displacement of the right arm might be smaller when influenced by proprioceptive information from the static left arm, than when in contrast instead with an object which is not a body part. There was no difference in the estimation of illusory displacement between male and female subjects and between right and left arms. No significant difference was observed between transferred displacements of the left elbow and the object. This means that the perception of limb position sensed by the proprioception of another limb can be distorted as easily as the perception of location of an external object. This suggests that the internal representation of static limb position is not enough to provide the correct information of current limb position in the absence of vision.     

Are movements/proprioception effective time-keeping mediators? The input hypothesis re-visited

Based upon the experimental literature surveyed, and given that time-keeping accuracy (i.e., constant error, absolute error, beneficial anticipation) is the appropriate performance dimension to consider, there appears to be virtually no support for the speculation that proprioception serves as an effective mediator for conscious time-keeping judgements. For the most part, individuals afforded movements during the interval to be timed did not perform significantly more precisely than did those people deprived of such time-filling movements, nor did they consistently estimate time with significantly less variability. On this basis, and because other predictions of the Input Hypothesis examined herein (left/right hand covariance, practice by movement group interaction and effect of different levels of proprioception) were not experimentally supported, the validity of the Input Hypothesis was rejected.     

Assessing Proprioception in Children: A Review

Proprioception is the subconscious and conscious awareness of the spatial and mechanical status of the musculoskeletal framework. When working with children with motor delays and sensory integrative dysfunction, occupational therapists routinely assess the client's proprioceptive system. However, currently available assessments for occupational therapists are primarily observer-based and concerns have been raised about the reliability of observer-based assessments of sensation. The author's purpose was to review measures of proprioception currently available to occupational therapists and explore direct measures of proprioception from neuroscience and rehabilitation that can be adapted for pediatric clinical use. Observer-based and direct measurements of proprioception assessments complement each other in meeting clinical needs. A better understanding of both types of evaluation will improve proprioceptive evaluation.     

Repetitive pointing to remembered proprioceptive targets improves 3D hand positioning accuracy

Repetitive pointing movements to remembered proprioceptive targets were investigated to determine whether dynamic proprioception could be used to modify the initial sensorimotor conditions associated with an active definition of the target position. Twelve blindfolded subjects used proprioception to reproduce a self-selected target position as accurately as possible. Ten repetitions for each limb were completed using overhead and scapular plane pointing tasks. A 3D optical tracking system determined hand trajectory start and endpoint positions for each repetition. These positions quantified three-dimensional pointing errors relative to the target position and the initial and preceding movement repetitions, as well as changes in movement direction and extent. Target position and cumulative start position errors were significantly greater than the corresponding preceding movement (inter-repetition) errors, and increased as the trial progressed. In contrast, hand trajectory start and endpoint inter-repetition errors decreased significantly with repeated task performance, as did movement extent, although it was consistently underestimated for each repetition. Pointing direction remained constant, except for the angle of elevation for scapular plane pointing, which consistently decreased throughout the trial. The results suggest that the initial conditions prescribed by actively defining a proprioceptive target were subsequently modified by dynamic proprioception, such that movement reproduction capability improved with repeated task performance.     

Inertial constraints on limb proprioception are independent of visual calibration

When the coincidence of a limb's spatial axes and inertial eigenvectors is broken, haptic proprioception of the limb's position conforms to the eigenvectors. Additionally, when prisms break the coincidence between an arm's visual and actual positions, haptic proprioception is shifted toward the visual-spatial direction. In 3 experiments, variation of the arm's mass distribution was combined with prism adaptation to investigate the hypothesis that the proprioceptive effects of inertial and visual manipulations are additive. This hypothesis was supported across manipulations of plane of motion, body posture, proprioceptive target, and proprioceptive experience during prism adaptation. Haptic proprioception seems to depend on local, physical reference frames that are relative to the physical reference frames for the body's environmental position and orientation.     

Proprioception and Motor Control in Parkinson's Disease

ABSTRACT

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that leads to a progressive decline in motor function. Growing evidence indicates that PD patients also experience an array of sensory problems that negatively impact motor function. This is especially true for proprioceptive deficits, which profoundly degrade motor performance. This review specifically address the relation between proprioception and motor impairments in PD. It is structured around 4 themes: (a) It examines whether the sensitivity of kinaesthetic perception, which is based on proprioceptive inputs, is actually altered in PD. (b) It discusses whether failed processes of proprioceptive-motor integration are central to the motor problems in PD. (c) It presents recent findings focusing on the link between the proprioception and the balance problems in PD. And (d) it discusses the current state of knowledge of how levodopa medication and deep brain stimulation affect proprioceptive and motor function in PD. The authors conclude that a failure to evaluate and to map proprioceptive information onto voluntary and reflexive motor commands is an integral part of the observed motor symptoms in PD.     

Muscular proprioception contributes to the control of interceptive actions

The authors proposed a model of the control of interceptive action over a ground plane (Chardenon, Montagne, Laurent, & Bootsma, 2004). This model is based on the cancellation of the rate of change of the angle between the current position of the target and the direction of displacement (i.e., the bearing angle). While several sources of visual information specify this angle, the contribution of proprioceptive information has not been directly tested. In this study, the authors used a virtual reality setup to study the role of proprioception when intercepting a moving target. In a series of experiments, the authors manipulated proprioceptive information by using the tendon vibration paradigm. The results revealed that proprioception is crucial not only to locate a moving target with respect to the body but also, and more importantly, to produce online displacement velocity changes to intercept a moving target. These findings emphasize the importance of proprioception in the control of interceptive action and illustrate the relevance of our model to account for the regulations produced by the participants.