Autonomic responses to proprioceptive and visual errors during single-trial reach adaptation

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) plays a crucial role in coordinating brain and bodily responses to cope with unexpected events. Extensive research in cognitive control has demonstrated that error-induced responses in peripheral autonomic measures, such as pupil diameter and heart rate, correlate with the quality of the subsequent behavioral adjustment. Here, we perform ANS measurements during a motor learning task to investigate error-induced phasic ANS responses in implicit motor learning. In a series of experiments, we measured multimodal autonomic signals including pupil diameter, skin conductance, and heart rate while participants made a reaching movement under occasional proprioceptive or visual perturbations of different magnitudes. We characterized the phasic autonomic responses to the induced errors and evaluated their influence on motor learning, which was quantified by comparing the trials immediately before and after the error event (single-trial reach adaptation). Consistent with previous research, the results revealed the set of ANS responses induced by unexpected motor errors; the pupil dilation, increased skin-conductance, and heart rate deceleration. These responses also demonstrated a clear dose-dependent increase in responses to errors in both visual and proprioceptive modalities. A latent factor analysis using motor learning and multimodal autonomic response data showed weak evidence of a possible association between error-related ANS responses and the modulation of implicit motor adaptation. Overall, the current results highlight an interesting new role of ANS measurement in human motor learning study that warrants further investigation.