Future movement plans interact in sequential arm movements

Abstract

Real-world actions often comprise a series of movements that cannot be entirely planned before initiation. When these actions are executed rapidly, the planning of multiple future movements needs to occur simultaneously with the ongoing action. How the brain solves this task remains unknown. Here, we address this question with a new sequential arm reaching paradigm that manipulates how many future reaches are available for planning while controlling execution of the ongoing reach. We show that participants plan at least two future reaches simultaneously with an ongoing reach. Further, the planning processes of the two future reaches are not independent of one another. Evidence that the planning processes interact is twofold. First, correcting for a visual perturbation of the ongoing reach target is slower when more future reaches are planned. Second, the curvature of the current reach is modified based on the next reach only when their planning processes temporally overlap. These interactions between future planning processes may enable smooth production of sequential actions by linking individual segments of a long sequence at the level of motor planning.