Takao Fukui Laboratory
Associate Professor Takao Fukui
Perception and Action / Visuomotor Transformation Processes / Implicit Motor Control / Reach-to-grasp Movements
1. Online control of reach-to-grasp movements
The reach-to-grasp movement is one of the most frequently performed activities in daily life and a fundamental human skill. Although healthy people can easily perform this movement, visuomotor transformation processes involved in the movement is rather complicated. We investigated the role of online vision of a target object and the participant’s moving hand in the early phase of reach-to-grasp movements (Fukui & Inui, 2006; 2009; 2013). Results showed that the effect of hand view appeared when target view in the early phase of movement was not available while the effect of hand view in the early phase of movement was very limited when target view was available immediately after movement onset. Therefore, online vision (of target and hand) for controlling grasping was utilized in a flexible fashion that depended on the visual environment (Fukui & Inui, 2013). In addition to the healthy participants’ study, we also explore the kinematic properties of reach-to-grasp movements in brain damaged patients (Fukui et al. in preparation) and individuals with autism spectrum disorders (Fukui et al. 2018).
2. Implicit motor control and its consequent perception of quotidian actions
Our motor actions are sometimes not properly performed despite our having complete understanding of the environmental situation with a suitable action intention. For example, the action of stepping onto a stopped escalator causes clumsy movements accompanied by an odd sensation. By exploring the properties of motor behavior and the subjective feeling of the odd sensation when stepping onto the stopped escalator, we found a dissociation between conscious awareness and subconscious motor control (Fukui et al. 2009). Other study combining a reaching task with visual backward masking paradigm showed that action evaluation is presumably modulated retrospectively by information that is superficially and arbitrarily associated with motor performance, as well as with the fundamental effect of the online sensorimotor information (Fukui & Gomi, 2012).
