An Emerging Target Paradigm to Evoke Fast Visuomotor Responses on Human Upper Limb Muscles

Summary

Presented here is a behavioral paradigm that elicits robust fast visuomotor responses on human upper limb muscles during visually guided reaches.

Abstract

To reach towards a seen object, visual information has to be transformed into motor commands. Visual information such as the object’s color, shape, and size are processed and integrated within numerous brain areas, then ultimately relayed to the motor periphery. In some instances, a reaction is needed as fast as possible. These fast visuomotor transformations, and their underlying neurological substrates, are poorly understood in humans as they have lacked a reliable biomarker. Stimulus-locked responses (SLRs) are short latency (<100 ms) bursts of electromyographic (EMG) activity representing the first wave of muscle recruitment influenced by visual stimulus presentation. SLRs provide a quantifiable output of rapid visuomotor transformations, but SLRs have not been consistently observed in all subjects in past studies. Here we describe a new, behavioral paradigm featuring the sudden emergence of a moving target below an obstacle that consistently evokes robust SLRs. Human participants generated visually guided reaches toward or away from the emerging target using a robotic manipulandum while surface electrodes recorded EMG activity from the pectoralis major muscle. In comparison to previous studies that investigated SLRs using static stimuli, the SLRs evoked with this emerging target paradigm were larger, evolved earlier, and were present in all participants. Reach reaction times (RTs) were also expedited in the emerging target paradigm. This paradigm affords numerous opportunities for modification that could permit systematic study of the impact of various sensory, cognitive, and motor manipulations on fast visuomotor responses. Overall, our results demonstrate that an emerging target paradigm is capable of consistently and robustly evoking activity within a fast visuomotor system.

Introduction

When we notice a message on our cellphone, we are prompted to perform a visually guided reach to pick up our phone and read the message. Visual features such as the shape and size of the phone are transformed into motor commands allowing us to successfully reach the goal. Such visuomotor transformations may be studied in laboratory conditions, which permit a high degree of control. However, there are scenarios where response time is important, e.g., catching the phone if it were to fall. Laboratory studies of fast visuomotor behaviors often rely on displaced target paradigms where on-going movements are modified in mid-flight following some change in target position (....

Protocol

All procedures were approved by the Health Science Research Ethics Board at the University of Western Ontario. All participants provided informed consent, were paid for their participation, and were free to withdraw from the experiment at any time.

1. Participant preparation

NOTE: A small sample of healthy, young participants was studied (3 female, 2 male; mean age: 26 years +/- 3.5). All participants were right-handed and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision, with no current visual, neurological, or musculoskeletal disorders. Participants with a history of musculoskeletal upper limb injury or disorders we....

Results

Stimulus locked responses (SLRs) are brief bursts of muscle activity time locked to the stimulus onset that evolve well before the larger volley of muscle recruitment associated with movement onset. The time-locked nature of the SLR produced a ‘banding’ of muscle activity visible at ~100 ms when viewing all trials sorted for reaction time (RT) (Figure 1a, highlighted by grey boxes). As shown in Figure 1a, SLRs was dependent on target location, with S.......

Discussion

Humans have a remarkable capacity, when needed, to generate rapid, visually guided actions at latencies that approach minimal afferent and efferent conduction delays. We have previously described stimulus-locked responses (SLRs) on the upper limb as a new measure for rapid visuomotor responses^6,9,10. While beneficial in providing a trial-by-trial benchmark for the first aspect of upper limb muscle recruitment influenced by the v.......

Materials

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Bagnoli-8 Desktop Surface EMG System	Delsys Inc.		Another reaching apparatus may be used
Kinarm End-Point Robot	Kinarm, Kingston, Ontario, Canada		Another reaching apparatus may be used
MATLAB (version R2016a) Stateflow and Simulink applications	The MathWorks, Inc., Natick, Massachusetts, United States
PROPixx projector	VPIXX Saint-Bruno, QC, Canada		This is a custom built addon for the Kinarm. Other displays may be used.
			Resolution: 1920 x 1080. Standard viewing monitors may also be used.