Early life experience sets hard limits on motor learning as evidenced from artificial arm use

摘要: The study or artificial-arms provides a unique opportunity to address long-standing questions on sensorimotor plasticity and development. Learning use an artificial-arm arguably depends fundamental building blocks of body representation would therefore be impacted by early-life experience. We tested motor-control in two adult populations with upper-limb deficiency: congenital one-handers - who were born partial arm, amputees lost their biological arm adulthood. Although one-hander started using at early age, they produced increased error noise directional errors when reaching visual targets, relative performed similarly controls. However, the earlier was fitted better motor control was. suggest that visuomotor integration, underlying observed deficits, is highly dependent either biological- experience very young Subsequently, opportunities for become more limited.