Sensorimotor Adaptation to Violations of Temporal Contiguity

Abstract

Most events are processed by a number of neural pathways. These pathways often differ considerably in processing speed. Thus, coherent perception requires some form of synchronization mechanism. Moreover, this mechanism must be flexible, because neural processing speed changes over the life of an organism. Here we provide behavioral evidence that humans can adapt to a new intersensory temporal relationship (which was artificially produced by delaying visual feedback). The conflict between these results and previous work that failed to find such improvements can be explained by considering the present results as a form of sensorimotor adaptation.