Motor commands for fast point-to-point arm movements are customized for small changes in inertial load

For repeated point-to-point arm movements it is often assumed that motor commands are customized in a trial-to-trial manner, based on previous endpoint error. To test this assumption, we perturbed movement execution without affecting the endpoint error by using a modest manipulation of inertia. Participants made point-to-point elbow flexion and extension movements in the horizontal plane, under the instruction to move as fast as possible from one target area to another. In selected trials the moment of inertia of the lower arm was increased or decreased by 25%. First, we found that an unexpected increase or decrease of inertia did not affect the open loop controlled part of the movement path (and thus endpoint error was not affected). Second, we found that when the increased or decreased inertia was presented repeatedly, after 5–11 trials motor commands were customized: the first 100 ms of agonistic muscle activity in the smoothed and rectified electromyographic signal of agonistic muscles was higher for the high inertia compared to the low inertia. We conclude that endpoint error is not the only parameter that is used to evaluate if motor commands lead to movements as planned.