Arm movement adaptation to concurrent pain constraints

Abstract

Abstract How do humans coordinate their movements in order to avoid pain? This paper investigates a motor task in the presence of concurrent potential pain sources: the arm must be withdrawn to avoid a slap on the hand while avoiding an elbow obstacle with an electrical noxious stimulation. The results show that our subjects learned to control the hand retraction movement in order to avoid the potential pain. Subject-specific motor strategies were used to modify the joint movement coordination to avoid hitting the obstacle with the elbow at the cost of increasing the risk of hand slap. Furthermore, they used a conservative strategy as if assuming an obstacle in 100% of the trials.