Damage to the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) can lead to Optic Ataxia (OA), in which patients misreach to peripheral targets. Recent research suggested that the PPC might be involved not only in simple reaching tasks toward peripheral targets, but also in changing the hand movement trajectory in real time if the target moves. The present study…

Numerous studies implicate superior temporal sulcus (STS) in the perception of human movement. More recent theories hold that STS is also involved in the "understanding" of human movement. However, almost no studies to date have associated STS function with observable variability in action understanding. The present study directly associated STS…

Previous studies have asked whether visual sensitivity and attentional processing in deaf signers are enhanced or altered as a result of their different sensory experiences during development, i.e., auditory deprivation and exposure to a visual language. In particular, deaf and hearing signers have been shown to exhibit a right visual field/left…

The present study was conducted to examine the relationship between expertise in movement correction and rate of movement reprogramming within limited time periods, and to clarify the specific cognitive processes regarding superior reprogramming ability in experts. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in baseball experts (n = 7) and…

When both hands perform concurrent goal-directed reaches, they become yoked to one another. To investigate the direction of this coupling (i.e., which hand is yoked to which), the temporal dynamics of bimanual reaches were compared with equivalent-amplitude unimanual reaches. These reaches were to target pairs located on either the left or right…

Humans have a tendency to perceive motion even in static images that simply "imply" movement. This tendency is so strong that our memory for actions depicted in static images is distorted in the direction of implied motion--a phenomenon known as representational momentum (RM). In the present study, we created an RM display depicting a pattern of…

It has been suggested that representing an action through observation and imagery share neural processes with action execution. In support of this view, motor-priming research has shown that observing an action can influence action initiation. However, there is little motor-priming research showing that imagining an action can modulate action…

Smooth pursuit impairment is recognized clinically by the presence of saccadic tracking of a small object and quantified by reduction in pursuit gain, the ratio of smooth eye movement velocity to the velocity of a foveal target. Correlation of the site of brain lesions, identified by imaging or neuropathological examination, with defective smooth…

Smooth pursuit eye movements are performed in order to prevent retinal image blur of a moving object. Rhesus monkeys are able to perform smooth pursuit eye movements quite similar as humans, even if the pursuit target does not consist in a simple moving dot. Therefore, the study of the neuronal responses as well as the consequences of…

This research tested the response inhibition account of the hand-advantage found in the finger precuing task. According to this account, the advantage of preparing two fingers on one hand (represented in one hemisphere) as opposed to preparing two fingers on two hands (represented in two hemispheres) is due, in part, to a response inhibition…

Smooth pursuit eye movements enable us to focus our eyes on moving objects by utilizing well-established mechanisms of visual motion processing, sensorimotor transformation and cognition. Novel smooth pursuit tasks and quantitative measurement techniques can help unravel the different smooth pursuit components and complex neural systems involved…

Samar and Parasnis [Samar, V. J., & Parasnis, I. (2005). Dorsal stream deficits suggest hidden dyslexia among deaf poor readers: correlated evidence from reduced perceptual speed and elevated coherent motion detection thresholds. "Brain and Cognition, 58," 300-311.] reported that correlated measures of coherent motion detection and perceptual…