Adaptation of eye and hand movements to target displacements of different size

Abstract

Previous work has documented that the direction of eye and hand movements can be adaptively modified using the double-step paradigm. Here we report that both motor systems adapt not only to small direction steps (5° gaze angle) but also to large ones (28° gaze angle). However, the magnitude of adaptation did not increase with step size, and the relative magnitude of adaptation therefore decreased from 67% with small steps to 15% with large steps. This decreasing efficiency of adaptation may reflect the participation of directionally selective neural circuits in double-step adaptation. © The Author(s) 2010.