Feedback Adaptation to Unpredictable Force Fields in 250 ms

Motor learning and adaptation are important functions of the nervous system. Classical studies have characterized how humans adapt to changes in the environment during tasks such as reaching, and have documented improvements in behavior across movements. However, little is known about how quickly the nervous system adapts to such disturbances. In particular, recent work has suggested that adaptation could be sufficiently fast to alter the control strategies of an ongoing movement. To further address the possibility that learning occurred within a single movement, we designed a series of human reaching experiments to extract from muscles recordings the latency of feedback adaptation. Our results confirmed that participants adapted their feedback responses to unanticipated force fields applied randomly. In addition, our analyses revealed that the feedback response was specifically and finely tuned to the ongoing perturbation not only across trials with the same force field, but also across different kinds of force fields. Finally, changes in muscle activity consistent with feedback adaptation occurred in ;250ms following reach onset. The adaptation that we observed across trials presented in a random context was similar to the one observed when the force fields could be anticipated, suggesting that these two adaptive processes may be closely linked to each other. In such case, our measurement of 250ms may correspond to the latency of motor adaptation in the nervous system. Key words: adaptive control; feedback control; motor adaptation; reaching Significance Statement We measure the latency of feedback adaptation in a human reaching experiment by applying force field trials randomly. Despite the fact that these disturbances could not be anticipated, we measured improvement in feedback corrections that paralleled standard adaptation. Correlates in muscle recordings occurred within ;250ms following movement onset. Such a short timescale of adaptation suggested that rapid adaptation complements feedback control of an ongoing movement. To further test this hypothesis, we demonstrate that indeed participants are able to adapt their feedback responses to different kinds of force fields and directions applied randomly. These findings support the existence of very rapid, possibly online, adaptation in the nervous system