Research reportModulation of prism adaptation by a shift of background in the monkey

•In monkeys, prism adaptation can be canceled or enhanced by a shift of the background during each reaching movement.•The shift of the background alone increased the motor error in the direction of the shift.•A small but salient figure could not serve as a background.•The monkey and the human share the same neural mechanisms for representing a target relative to the background.

Recent human behavioral studies have shown that the position of a visual target is instantly represented relative to the background (e.g., a large square) and used for evaluating the error in reaching the target. In the present study, we examined whether the same allocentric mechanism is shared by the monkey. We trained two monkeys to perform a fast and accurate reaching movement toward a visual target with a square in the background. Then, a visual shift (20 mm or 4.1°) was introduced by wedge prisms to examine the process of decreasing the error during an exposure period (30 trials) and the size of the error upon removal of the prisms (aftereffect). The square was shifted during each movement, either in the direction of the visual displacement or in the opposite direction, by an amount equal to the size of the visual shift. The ipsilateral shift of the background increased the asymptote during the exposure period and decreased the aftereffect, i.e., prism adaptation was attenuated by the ipsilateral shift. By contrast, a contralateral shift enhanced adaptation. We further tested whether the shift of the square alone could cause an increase in the motor error. Although the target did not move, the shift of the square increased the motor error in the direction of the shift. These results were generally consistent with the results reported in human subjects, suggesting that the monkey and the human share the same neural mechanisms for representing a target relative to the background.