A influência de pistas visuais em processos de adaptação sensório-motora

Abstract

Motor adaptation is inherently important for rehabilitation. Repeated adaptation can lead to learning a new task. Although less well understood, this type of motor learning is an important method for achieving long-term improvements in movement patterns. Thus, the improvement of the new motor control is not considered a disturbance cancellation process, but rather a process that resembles a reoptimization of movement that helps in learning and predicting sensory consequences of motor commands. Understanding the mechanisms of adaptation and sensorimotor learning are essential for improving neuromotor rehabilitation strategies and protocols. It is known, to maximize performance in motor tasks, the generation of stochastic disturbances, either by speed or position variation that leads to the destabilization of fluid movement, has positive consequences in the motor adaptation process. In this sense, this study aims to verify the influence of visual cues in the prediction error evaluation, performing interventions in the range movement. To this end, a robotic platform and its respective computational interface were developed, in which subjects can perform motion tasks in the x-y plane that may or may not be accompanied by disturbances. In all 8 volunteers were evaluated during x-y handler displacement tasks, whether or not accompanied by variations in force fields and visual field clues. Visual cues negatively interfere with motor adaptation and random force fields have detrimental impacts on learning.