Proprioceptive control of multijoint movement: bimanual circle drawing

Proprioception is used by the central nervous system (CNS) in the control o f the spatial and temporal characteristics of single joint and multiple joi nt movement. The present study addressed the role of proprioception in the control of bilateral cyclical movements of the limbs. Normal blindfolded hu man subjects drew circles simultaneously and symmetrically with the two arm s (16 cm diameter, 1 /s) upon two digitizing tablets. In selected trials, v ibration (60-70 Hz) was applied to the tendon of the biceps and/or anterior deltoid muscles of the dominant arm to distort the proprioceptive informat ion from muscle spindle afferents. One goal of this study was to identify w hether tendon vibration influenced the spatial characteristics of circles d rawn by the vibrated, dominant arm and the non-vibrated, non-dominant arm. A second goal was to determine the effect of vibration on the temporal coup ling between the two arms during circle drawing. The results revealed that tendon vibration affected the spatial characteristics of circles drawn by t he vibrated arm in a manner similar to that previously found for unilateral circle drawing. During bimanual circle drawing, vibration had only a minim al effect on the spatial characteristics of the non-vibrated, non-dominant arm. Temporal interlimb coupling was quantified by the relative phasing bet ween the arms. Without tendon vibration, the dominant arm led the nondomina nt arm. Vibration of the dominant arm increased the average phase lead. In a first control experiment, vibration of the non-dominant arm decreased the phase lead of the dominant arm, or even reversed it to a nondominant arm p hase lead. In a second control experiment, the subjects performed the biman ual circle-drawing task with vision of only the vibrated arm, in which case there was no spatial distortion of the circles drawn by the vibrated arm, but the phase relation between the two arms was still shifted as if vision were completely unavailable. It was concluded that, in bimanual movements s uch as these, the spatial and temporal characteristics of movement are cont rolled independently. Whereas the spatial characteristics of hand movement seem to be controlled unilaterally, the temporal characteristics of interli mb coupling appear to be controlled by proprioceptive information from both limbs, possibly by a proprioceptive triggering mechanism.