1 3 Exp Brain Res DOI 10.1007/s00221-014-3833-0 RESEARCH ARTICLE Intermanual transfer and proprioceptive recalibration following training with translated visual feedback of the hand Ahmed A. Mostafa · Danielle Salomonczyk · Erin K. Cressman · Denise Y. P. Henriques Received: 9 June 2013 / Accepted: 4 January 2014 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 across the dominant and non-dominant hands. Second, we looked to establish whether changes in hand propriocep- tion that occur with the trained hand following adaptation also transfer to the untrained hand. We found intermanual motor transfer to the left untrained (non-dominant) hand after subjects trained their right (dominant) hand to reach with translated visual feedback of their hand. Motor trans- fer from the left trained to the right untrained hand was not observed. Despite finding changes in felt hand posi- tion in both trained hands, we did not find similar evi- dence of proprioceptive recalibration in the right or left untrained hands. Taken together, our results suggest that unlike visuomotor adaptation, proprioceptive recalibra- tion does not transfer between hands and is specific only to the arm exposed to the distortion. Keywords Visuomotor adaptation · Proprioception · Sensory recalibration · Intermanual transfer · Reaching · Learning Introduction Moving the hand while its visual feedback is distorted leads to a mismatch of vision and action that results in sen- sorimotor remapping and adaptation. For example, when subjects first reach to a target with distorted visual feed- back (e.g., a cursor that is rotated or translated relative to the hand’s actual motion), the cursor reaches are initially deviated but are then gradually adjusted or adapted across trials so that later reaches bring the cursor more directly to the target (Krakauer et al. 1999; Sainburg and Wang 2002; Simani et al. 2007). This visuomotor adaptation has also been shown to transfer across arms, which is referred to as intermanual transfer. In such cases, learning with one Abstract Reaching with visual feedback that is mis- aligned with respect to the actual hand’s location leads to changes in reach trajectories (i.e., visuomotor adap- tation). Previous studies have also demonstrated that when training to reach with misaligned visual feedback of the hand, the opposite hand also partially adapts, pro- viding evidence of intermanual transfer. Moreover, our laboratory has shown that visuomotor adaptation to a misaligned hand cursor, either translated or rotated rela- tive to the hand, also leads to changes in felt hand posi- tion (what we call proprioceptive recalibration), such that subjects’ estimate of felt hand position relative to both visual and non-visual reference markers (e.g., body mid- line) shifts in the direction of the visuomotor distortion. In the present study, we first determined the extent that motor adaptation to a translated cursor leads to transfer to the opposite hand, and whether this transfer differs A. A. Mostafa · D. Salomonczyk · D. Y. P. Henriques Centre for Vision Research, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada A. A. Mostafa · D. Y. P. Henriques (*) School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York University, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, ON M3J0G4, Canada e-mail: deniseh@yorku.ca A. A. Mostafa Faculty of Physical Education, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt D. Salomonczyk · D. Y. P. Henriques Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada E. K. Cressman School of Human Kinetics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada