PubMed Health⌕ Search

SEARCH · PubMed Health

Results for “Kinesthesis”

Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 397 records · Page 22Linked to original sources

Optical information for detecting loss in one's own forward speed.

An experiment was conducted to determine whether accuracy and efficiency of detecting loss in one's own forward speed are constant when optical information is invariant over a wide range of environmental variables. Deceleration rate, initial forward velocity, and altitude were varied so as to isolate initial optical flow rate, optical flow deceleration, and optical flow damping invariants specified in observer-relevant metrics. The candidate resulting in the most consistent effect on performance was global damping, which specifies a contrast of flow deceleration with initial flow rate. The finding is a first step toward validating a procedure for identifying functional invariants by assessing the usefulness of mathematically specified optical information for the perception of egomotion. The research represents both a methodological development and empirical support for the broader program of ecological functionalism.

Acceleration↗

Visual control during straight road driving.

In a laboratory experiment, visual thresholds were determined for change in heading angle and change in lateral position during simulated straight road driving. These thresholds differ for different delineations, forward speeds and exposure durations. The thresholds as found are low enough to be compatible with the precision with which a driver actually keeps course on a straight road. Therefore, they are likely candidates as visual cues for course control by a driver. Some implications for future research are discussed.

Automobile Driving↗

A visually-driven postural after-effect.

Viewing a large-scale moving scene typically causes a free standing observer to lean in the direction of the seen motion. It was also noted that when the visual motion ceases, the observer drifts back toward the upright position, but instead of this body movement stopping at the vertical, it tends to continue so that the observer remains leaning in the opposite direction for several seconds before finally returning to the upright. The two experiments reported here were designed to investigate the determinants of this postural after-effect in relation to a pitch vection stimulus. Our findings clearly showed that the after-effect was dependent upon (1) the establishment of a prior visually-induced body lean, and (2) sight of the static display on the cessation of motion. The notion of an internalised representation of body position was invoked to account for these results.

Adult↗

Discrimination between trunk and head rotation; a study comparing neuronal data from the cat with human psychophysics.

Kinesthetic information from labyrinthine and neck receptors is required for reflex control and conscious perception of posture and movement. This study considers (1) the neuronal responses to horizontal labyrinthine and neck stimulation and their interaction both in the anterior suprasylvian (AS) cortex and in the vestibular nuclei (VN) of cats, and (2) human turning sensation related to these stimuli. Convergence of labyrinthine (L) and neck (N) input of comparable sensitivity was found in 80% of the AS neurons and in only 27% of the VN neurons. At both sites, the on-direction of L-responses as well as N-responses was either to the ipsilateral or to the contralateral side (type I and type II responses, respectively). When combining the two stimuli during head rotation, the two inputs could be synergistic (same on-direction) or antagonistic (opposite on-directions). Their interaction consisted of either an additive or subtractive summation leading to enhanced or depressed interaction responses. These interaction patterns are compatible with the subtractive and additive mechanisms which have been proposed to be essential for the stabilisation of the trunk and of the head, respectively. The psychophysical experiments showed that human turning sensations depend on the part of the body to which they are referred. Subjects taking the trunk as reference, reported similar turning sensations during both labyrinthine and neck stimulation, and weak or no turning sensation during head rotation. This suggests an antagonistic interaction of the two inputs. In subjects taking the head as reference, neck stimulation induced an illusionary sensation of head turning. Its direction was such that it would be synergistic with the vestibularly induced sensation of head turning during isolated head rotation. Thus, there appear to exist parallels between the basic operations performed by neurons in cat and by human subjects during labyrinthine-neck interactions.

Animals↗

Motion mechanisms in strobe-reared cats: psychophysical and electrophysical measures.

Cats were reared from birth to at least 12 months of age in a visually static environment (illuminated 40/min by a 3 mu sec strobe flash). Single unit recordings from these animals revealed abnormalities in spatial and directional properties of cortical neurons. In an attempt to find psychophysical correlates of these neural deficits, spatial contrast sensitivity and motion detection thresholds were measured behaviorally. Both spatial vision and motion detection were greatly impaired. While spatial deficits failed to recover, motion thresholds improved greatly following extended training. These improvements in behavioral motion response were accompanied by the recovery of cortical directional selectivity. The recovery of motion thresholds and directional selectivity was direction specific: the distribution of the preferred directions of cortical neurons and motion thresholds were sharply biased towards the direction first seen in training. Thus, directional mechanisms of adult motion deprived cats may be modified if following deprivation the animals are trained to detect moving stimuli.

Animals↗

Visual control of movement patterns and the grammar of action.

In this experiment adult subjects copied three types of material (letters, reversed letters and geometric shapes) with and without sight of the hand and the writing trace. Without vision the number of movement segments decreased and the sequence and direction of movements were altered. This means that subjects did not use a fixed stored representation to produce items nor did they obey the rules of Goodnow and Levine's (1973) grammar of action. When spatial location is made more difficult by the removal of vision, movement production is simplified to reduce the number of relocations required. The use of consistent directions of movement depends on the ability to use visual control of spatial location.

Form Perception↗

Effect of learning on production of duration in variable motor conditions.

It has been suggested that increasing proprioceptive feedback and ensuring its consistency from trial to trial favours timing accuracy. The progressive acquisition of a timing performance with isometric and anisometric responses was investigated in conditions of 'inconsistent feedback', with two different methods: counting seconds or not. Subjects gripped the handle of a dynamometer during precisely 5 seconds in 4 randomly distributed conditions: 'Weak' or 'Strong' constant force, 'Slow' or 'Rapid' variable force. A first group produced the durations without counting and a second group counted seconds either mentally or aloud. Learning was examined in 4 successive blocks of trials. Average produced durations did not differ as a function of group, but the variability was reduced when subjects counted seconds. In both groups, the constant force conditions induced more accurate responses than the variable force conditions in the first block of trials. 'Slow' and 'Rapid' conditions were respectively associated with overestimation and under-estimation of response duration. These trends diminished progressively with learning. Both groups yielded sequential effects linked to duration and independent of condition. These data suggest that, whether subjects counted or not, learning was not based on condition-specific proprioceptive feedback. It may involve the elaboration of an internal temporal reference common to all conditions.

Adult↗

The independence of horizontal and vertical dimensions in handwriting with and without vision.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between horizontal and vertical components of handwriting production when subjects were instructed to vary the size of these components separately or together. The effect of vision on these instructed size transformations also was examined. Eight female adults participated in the experiment. The basic task was to write the words 'poppy' and 'wood' cursively five times, the first time in their normal size and then with four size transformations. These transformations--one-fourth, one-half, double, and four-times their normal size--were made under three different sets of instructions (width only, height only, both) and in two visual conditions (normal, blindfolded), for a total of six sets of five repetitions. The individual slopes (changes in actual values across the transformation values) for width and height under instructions to change both parameters were almost identical to the width and height slopes under instructions to change only the single parameter, supporting the notion of the independence of the horizontal and vertical components. Further, an analysis of these individual slopes indicated that the size transformations were significantly greater (p less than 0.05) (and closer to the instructed values) with vision than without vision.

Adult↗

Spatial topological constraints in a bimanual task.

Previous research has shown that the concurrent performance of two manual tasks results in a tight temporal coupling of the limbs. The intent of the present experiment was to investigate whether a similar coupling exists in the spatial domain. Subjects produced continuous drawing of circles and lines, one task at a time or bimanually, for a 20 s trial. In bimanual conditions in which subjects produced the circle task with one hand and the line task with the other, there was a clear tendency for the movement path of the circle task to become more line-like and the movement path of the line task to become more circle-like, i.e., a spatial magnet effect. A bimanual circle task and a bimanual line task did not exhibit changes in the movement path when compared to single-hand controls. In all bimanual conditions, the hands were tightly temporally locked. The evidence of temporal coupling and concomitant accommodation in the movement path for the conditions in which the hands were producing different shapes suggests that spatial constraints play a role in the governance of bimanual coordinated actions.

Adult↗

Kinematics of aiming in direction and amplitude: a developmental study.

The patterns of aimed movements to visual targets were analyzed in children aged 6, 8 and 10. Tasks with direction and/or amplitude requirements were used. The tasks were performed both with and without vision. Peak velocity, acceleration and deceleration and their relative temporal occurrence were evaluated. Overall, the 6- and 10-year-olds exhibited higher peak velocity and acceleration when performing the pure directional task than when performing tasks with an amplitude or stopping requirement. On the contrary, 8-year-olds showed similar peak acceleration and velocity across all three tasks. Similarly, when performing the pure directional task, the 6- and 10-year-olds reached their peak velocity and acceleration relatively later in time than the 8-year-olds. Vision of movement increased the peak velocity in all experimental tasks and peak acceleration was increased only in the pure directional task. Thus, movement kinematics varied according to the task requirements and age. Eight-year-olds showed greater propensity to feedback control in all tasks, suggesting an over-inhibition in their approach patterns, whereas 10-year-olds tended to use feedforward processes, with a shortened deceleration phase.

Child↗

Preprogramming vs. on-line control in simple movement sequences.

In the present experiment the acceleration traces produced during a repetitive arm extension/flexion movement were measured in addition to the RT required to initiate such a movement. The speed at which this task was completed as well as the number of extension/flexion segments were varied to allow for either preprogramming or on-line control. Evidence from the acceleration traces and the RT data suggested that the movements completed as quickly as possible were preprogrammed; whereas, those completed more slowly were controlled on-line. Furthermore, the topologies of the power spectral density functions from the acceleration traces of each type of movement displayed characteristics typical of these forms of control.

Acceleration↗