Early life experience sets hard limits on motor learning as evidenced from artificial arm use

Abstract

The study or artificial arms provides a unique opportunity to address long-standing questions on sensorimotor plasticity and development. Learning to use an artificial arm arguably depends on fundamental building blocks of body representation and would therefore be impacted by early-life experience. We tested artificial arm motor-control in two adult populations with upper-limb deficiency: congenital one-handers - who were born with a partial arm, and amputees - who lost their biological arm in adulthood. Brain plasticity research teaches us that the earlier we train to acquire new skills (or use a new technology) the better we benefit from this practice as adults. Instead, we found that although one-hander started using an artificial arm as toddlers, they produced increased error noise and directional errors when reaching to visual targets, relative to amputees who performed similarly to controls. However, the earlier a one-hander was fitted with an artificial arm the better their motor control was. We suggest that visuomotor integration, underlying the observed deficits, is highly dependent on either biological or artificial arm experience at a very young age. Subsequently, opportunities for sensorimotor plasticity become more limited.