Adaptation to Laterally Asymmetrical Visuomotor Delay Has an Effect on Action But Not on Perception

When interacting with the environment, the sensorimotor system faces temporal and spatial discrepancies between sensory inputs, such as delay in sensory information transmission, and asymmetrical visual inputs across space. These discrepancies can affect motor control and the representation of space. We recently showed that adaptation to a laterally asymmetric delay in the visual feedback induces neglect-like effects in blind drawing movements, expressed by asymmetrical elongation of circles that are drawn in different workspaces and directions; this establishes a possible connection between delayed feedback and asymmetrical spatial processing in the control of action. In the current study, we investigate whether such adaptation also influences visual perception. In addition, we examined transfer to another motor task – a line bisection task that is commonly used to detect spatial disorders, and extend these results to examine the mapping of these neglect-like effects. We performed two sets of experiments in which participants executed lateral reaching movements, and were exposed to visual feedback delay only in the left workspace. We examined transfer of adaptation to a perceptual line bisection task – answers about the perceived midline of lines that were presented in different directions and workspaces, and to a blind motor line bisection task – reaching movements toward the centers of similar lines. We found that the adaptation to the asymmetrical delay transferred to the control of lateral movements, but did not affect the perceived location of the midlines. Our results clarify the effect of asymmetrical delayed visual feedback on perception and action, and provide potential insights on the link between visuomotor delay and neurological disorders such as the hemispatial neglect syndrome.