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J Neurophysiol (November 5, 2008). doi:10.1152/jn.90781.2008
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Submitted on July 18, 2008
Revised on October 6, 2008
Accepted on October 30, 2008

Evidence for Multisensory Spatial-to-Motor Transformations in Aiming Movements of Children

Bradley R. King1*, Florian A. Kagerer1, Jose L. Contreras-Vidal2, and Jane E Clark1

1 University of Maryland, College Park
2 University of Maryland

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: bking7{at}umd.edu.

The extant developmental literature investigating age-related differences in the execution of aiming movements has predominantly focused on visuo-motor coordination, despite the fact that additional sensory modalities, such as audition and somatosensation, may contribute to motor planning, execution and learning. The current study investigated the execution of aiming movements towards both visual and acoustic stimuli. Furthermore, we examined the interaction between visuo- and auditory-motor coordination as 5- to 10-year-old participants executed aiming movements to visual and acoustic stimuli before and after exposure to a visuo-motor rotation. Children in all age groups demonstrated significant improvement in performance under the visuo-motor perturbation, as indicated by decreased initial directional (IDE) and root mean squared errors (RMSE). Moreover, children in all age groups demonstrated significant visual aftereffects during the post-exposure phase, suggesting a successful update of their spatial-to-motor transformations. Interestingly, these updated spatial-to-motor transformations also impacted auditory-motor performance, as indicated by distorted movement trajectories during the auditory post-exposure phase. The distorted trajectories were present during auditory post-exposure even though the auditory-motor relationship was not manipulated. Results suggest that by the age of 5 years, children have developed a multisensory spatial-to-motor transformation for the execution of aiming movements towards both visual and acoustic targets.







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