Motor Adaptation to Single Force Pulses: Sensitive to Direction but Insensitive to Within-Movement Pulse Placement and Magnitude

Although previous experiments have identified that errors in movement induce adaptation, the precise manner in which errors determine subsequent control is poorly understood. Here we used transient pulses of force, distributed pseudo-randomly throughout a movement set, to study how the timing of feedback within a movement influenced subsequent predictive control. Human subjects generated a robust adaptive response in postpulse movements that opposed the pulse direction. Regardless of the location or magnitude of the pulse, all pulses yielded similar changes in predictive control. All current supervised and unsupervised theories of motor learning presume that adaptation is proportional to error. Current neural models that broadly encode movement velocity and adapt proportionally to motor error can mimic human insensitivity to pulse location, but cannot mimic human insensitivity to pulse magnitude. We conclude that single trial adaptation to force pulses reveals a categorical strategy that humans adopt to counter the direction, rather than the magnitude, of movement error.