Goal synchronization of bimanual skills depends on proprioception

The present experiments in Human subjects were designed to test whether proprioceptive feedback plays a role in optimising bimanual synchronization in a goal-oriented familiar task. Goal-synchronization is a typical feature of bimanual everyday skills. The purpose of the study was to disturb proprioceptive signalling by means of vibrating the leading left limb while subjects performed a bimanual task on a drawer manipulandum. Blindfolded subjects reached for and opened the drawer with the left hand while the right hand was reaching for grasping an object as the drawer was fully opened. Discrete events of the task were used to measure movement onset times of pulling and grasping hands and of goal arrival times. A spatial-temporal goal invariance was still present despite asymmetrical limb assignments and subjects were blindfolded. In contrast, when vibration (80 Hz) was applied to the forearm flexors of the leading pulling limb, we found that the interval between the hands at goal reaching was significantly prolonged. This suggests that synchronization is not predetermined entirely by feedforward commands and that proprioceptive feedback is necessary for updating an internal forward model and perhaps also for lower-level corrections in order to ensure covariant limb movements for optimal goal-synchronization.