Visually guided reaching: bilateral posterior parietal lesions cause a switch from fast visuomotor to slow cognitive control

Abstract

The visually guided reaching of two patients with bilateral optic ataxia was explored in two experiments. In Experiment 1 simple delayed pointing was compared with immediate pointing. In the immediate pointing task both variable and constant errors increased with target eccentricity. In contrast to the performance of control subjects and contrary to their own beliefs, the patients both showed improved accuracy in the delay condition. This improvement was manifest as a reduction in both pointing variability and in the constant angular error towards the point of fixation. Both angular errors and their improvement with the delay were proportional to target eccentricity. Experiment 2 used a task in which the target was pre-viewed 5s prior to its re-exposure for pointing ('delayed real pointing'). On some trials a conflict was introduced between the present and previous visual information by changing the target's location during the delay. In contrast to control subjects, who ignored the pre-viewed location and aimed directly at the current target, both patients with optic ataxia initiated their movements towards the previously viewed target location. Evidently they relied on off-line information in preference to on-line visual information. In addition, the patients often failed to detect the changes in target location. One of the patients sometimes even guessed incorrectly that the target had changed its location, and her movement trajectory was then more affected by her false belief than by the target's actual location. These findings confirm that posterior parietal lesions severely disrupt direct visuomotor transformations, and suggest that the residual performance is mediated indirectly by expectations or beliefs about target position.