The dominance of haptics over audition in controlling wrist velocity during striking movements

Cao, Y., Giordano, B. L., Avanzini, F. and McAdams, S. (2016) The dominance of haptics over audition in controlling wrist velocity during striking movements. Experimental Brain Research, 234(4), pp. 1145-1158. (doi: 10.1007/s00221-015-4529-9) (PMID:26790425) (PMCID:PMC4785215)

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Abstract

Skilled interactions with sounding objects, such as drumming, rely on resolving the uncertainty in the acoustical and tactual feedback signals generated by vibrating objects. Uncertainty may arise from mis-estimation of the objects’ geometry-independent mechanical properties, such as surface stiffness. How multisensory information feeds back into the fine-tuning of sound-generating actions remains unexplored. Participants (percussionists, non-percussion musicians, or non-musicians) held a stylus and learned to control their wrist velocity while repeatedly striking a virtual sounding object whose surface stiffness was under computer control. Sensory feedback was manipulated by perturbing the surface stiffness specified by audition and haptics in a congruent or incongruent manner. The compensatory changes in striking velocity were measured as the motor effects of the sensory perturbations, and sensory dominance was quantified by the asymmetry of congruency effects across audition and haptics. A pronounced dominance of haptics over audition suggested a superior utility of somatosensation developed through long-term experience with object exploration. Large interindividual differences in the motor effects of haptic perturbation potentially arose from a differential reliance on the type of tactual prediction error for which participants tend to compensate: vibrotactile force versus object deformation. Musical experience did not have much of an effect beyond a slightly greater reliance on object deformation in mallet percussionists. The bias toward haptics in the presence of crossmodal perturbations was greater when participants appeared to rely on object deformation feedback, suggesting a weaker association between haptically sensed object deformation and the acoustical structure of concomitant sound during everyday experience of actions upon objects.

Item Type:Articles
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Giordano, Dr Bruno and Cao, Mr Yinan
Authors: Cao, Y., Giordano, B. L., Avanzini, F., and McAdams, S.
College/School:College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Psychology & Neuroscience
Journal Name:Experimental Brain Research
Publisher:Springer
ISSN:0014-4819
ISSN (Online):1432-1106
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2016 The Authors
First Published:First published in Experimental Brain Research 234(4):1145-1158
Publisher Policy:Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

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Project CodeAward NoProject NamePrincipal InvestigatorFunder's NameFunder RefLead Dept
649631The neural representation of vocal emotion: representational similarity analysis and information-theoretic approachesJoachim GrossBiotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)BB/M009742/1INP - CENTRE FOR COGNITIVE NEUROIMAGING