Selective impairment of sensorimotor representations following short-term upper-limb immobilization

Abstract

In the present experiment, we examined whether short-term upper-limb immobilization would selectively affect the representation of the immobilized limb (using a hand laterality task) or whether the effect of immobilization would extend to another body part (using a foot laterality task). A rigid splint placed on the participants’ left hand was used for immobilization. A control group did not undergo the immobilization procedure. We compared the participants’ performances on the hand and foot laterality tasks before (T₁) and after (T₂) a 48-hour delay, corresponding to the immobilization period. For controls, response time analysis indicated a benefit of task repetition for the recognition of both hand and foot images. For the immobilized group, a slowdown of performance appeared in T₂ for hand images, but not for foot images. The reduced benefit of task repetition following left-hand immobilization appeared for both the immobilized and non-immobilized hand images. These findings revealed that the general cognitive representation of upper-limb movements is affected by the decrease in input/output signal processing due to the left-hand immobilization, while the cognitive representation of lower-limb movements is not.