Cognitive neuropsychology
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Cognitive neuropsychology · Oct 2008
Context influences on the preparation and execution of reaching movements.
The ability of rapidly adapting our motor behaviour in order to face the unpredictable changes in the surrounding environment is fundamental for survival. To achieve such a high level of efficiency our motor system has to assess continuously the context in which it acts, gathering all available information that can be relevant for planning goal-oriented movements. One still-debated aspect of movement organization is the nature and timing of motor planning. ⋯ This tendency was present in all our participants and significant in 90% of them. Furthermore we found a moderate, but again very consistent, anticorrelation between RTs and MTs on a trial-by-trial base. These findings are consistent with strategic changes in movement programmes for the very same movements under different cognitive contexts, requiring different degrees of feedback-driven control during movement.