1. Neuroscience

Action history influences subsequent movement via two distinct processes

  1. Welber Marinovic  Is a corresponding author
  2. Eugene Poh
  3. Aymar de Rugy
  4. Timothy J Carroll  Is a corresponding author
  1. Curtin University, Australia
  2. The University of Queensland, Australia
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.26713
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  1. Welber Marinovic
  2. Eugene Poh
  3. Aymar de Rugy
  4. Timothy J Carroll
(2017)
Action history influences subsequent movement via two distinct processes
eLife 6:e26713.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.26713
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Abstract

The characteristics of goal-directed actions tend to resemble those of previously executed actions, but it is unclear whether such effects depend strictly on action history, or also reflect context-dependent processes related to predictive motor planning. Here we manipulated the time available to initiate movements after a target was specified, and studied the effects of predictable movement sequences, to systematically dissociate effects of the most recently executed movement from the movement required next. We found that directional biases due to recent movement history strongly depend upon movement preparation time, suggesting an important contribution from predictive planning. However predictive biases co-exist with an independent source of bias that depends only on recent movement history. The results indicate that past experience influences movement execution through a combination of temporally-stable processes that are strictly use-dependent, and dynamically-evolving and context-dependent processes that reflect prediction of future actions.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Welber Marinovic

    School of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
    For correspondence
    welber.marinovic@curtin.edu.au
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2472-7955

  2. Eugene Poh

    School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1719-000X

  3. Aymar de Rugy

    School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  4. Timothy J Carroll

    School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
    For correspondence
    timothy.carroll@uq.edu.au
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

Australian Research Council (DE120100653)

  • Welber Marinovic

Australian Research Council (FT120100391)

  • Timothy J Carroll

The authors declare that the Australian Research Council had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: All procedures were approved by the Human Medical Research Ethics Committee of the University of Queensland and written informed consent was obtained from the participants.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Sabine Kastner, Princeton University, United States

Publication history

  1. Received: March 10, 2017
  2. Accepted: October 22, 2017
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: October 23, 2017 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: October 30, 2017 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2017, Marinovic et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Welber Marinovic
  2. Eugene Poh
  3. Aymar de Rugy
  4. Timothy J Carroll
(2017)
Action history influences subsequent movement via two distinct processes
eLife 6:e26713.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.26713

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