The role of internal forward models and proprioception in hand position estimation

Our ability to properly move and react in different situations is largely dependent on our perception of our limbs’ position. At least three sources — vision, proprioception, and internal forward models (FMs) — seem to contribute to this perception. To the best of our knowledge, the effect of each source has not been studied individually. Specifically, role of FM has been ignored in some previous studies. We hypothesized that FM has a critical role in subjects’ perception which needs to be considered in the relevant studies to obtain more reliable results. Therefore, we designed an experiment with the goal of investigating FM and proprioception role in subjects’ perception of their hand’s position. Three groups of subjects were recruited in the study. Based on the experiment design, it was supposed that subjects in different groups relied on proprioception, FM, and both of them for estimating their unseen hand’s position. Comparing the results of three groups revealed significant difference between their estimation’ errors. FM provided minimum estimation error, while proprioception had a bias error in the tested region. Integrating proprioception with FM decreased this error. Integration of two Gaussian functions, fitted to the error distribution of FM and proprioception groups, was simulated and created a mean error value almost similar to the experimental observation. These results suggest that FM role needs to be considered when studying the perceived position of the limbs. This can lead to gain better insights into the mechanisms underlying the perception of our limbs’ position which might have potential clinical and rehabilitation applications, e.g., in the postural control of elderly which are at high risk of falls and injury because of deterioration of their perception with age.