Visual control of reaching movements without vision of the limb. II. Evidence of fast unconscious processes correcting the trajectory of the hand to the final position of a double-step stimulus

Abstract

In this study, a visual target was localized by both limb and eye. The experimental procedure provided an opportunity to analyze the limb movement trajectories to the target whose location was displaced during saccades. Absence of visual information about position of the moving limb did not interfere with correction of the trajectory of pointing movements. These corrections reflect the new information about target position that becomes available at the end of the first saccade. Mean localization errors to stationary and to displaced targets were not significantly different. This result suggests that subjects were able to compare visual (retinal + eye position) information about the position of the target with information about the position of their moving limb derived from kinesthesis and/or efference copies of the motor commands. An analysis of velocity profiles indicates that the observed corrections of hand movement to target displacement could not be identified by an inflexion point in the trajectory. None of the subjects reported seeing the target change location. In other words, the motor command was adjustable despite the failure of changes in visual locus to reach consciousness.