High intra-task and low inter-task correlations of motor skills in humans creates an individualized behavioural pattern.

Our motor system allows us to generate an enormous breadth of voluntary actions, but it remains unclear whether and how much motor skill translates across tasks. For example, if an individual is good at gross motor control, are they also good at fine motor control? Previous research about the generalization across motor skills has been equivocal. Here, we compare human performance across five different motor skills. High correlation between task measures would suggest a certain level of underlying sensorimotor ability that dictates performance across all task types. Low correlation would suggest specificity in abilities across tasks. Performance on a reaching task, an object-hitting task, a bimanual coordination task, a rapid motion task and a target tracking task, was examined twice in a cohort of 25 healthy individuals. Across the cohort, we found relatively high correlations for different spatial and temporal parameters within a given task (16-53% of possible parameter pairs were significantly correlated, with significant r values ranging from 0.53 to 0.97) but relatively low correlations across different tasks (2.7-4.4% of possible parameter pairs were significantly correlated, with significant r values ranging from 0.53-0.71). We performed a cluster analysis across all individuals using 76 performance measures across all tasks for the two repeat testing sessions and demonstrated that repeat tests were commonly grouped together (16 of 25 pairs were grouped next to each other). These results highlight that individuals have different abilities across motor tasks, and that these patterns are consistent across time points.

Integration of proprioceptive and visual feedback during online control of reaching.

Visual and proprioceptive feedback both contribute to perceptual decisions, but it remains unknown how these feedback signals are integrated together or consider factors such as delays and variance during online control. We investigated this question by having participants reach to a target with randomly applied mechanical and/or visual disturbances. We observed that the presence of visual feedback during a mechanical disturbance did not increase the size of the muscle response significantly but did decrease variance, consistent with a dynamic Bayesian integration model. In a control experiment, we verified that vision had a potent influence when mechanical and visual disturbances were both present but opposite in sign. These results highlight a complex process for multisensory integration, where visual feedback has a relatively modest influence when the limb is mechanically disturbed, but a substantial influence when visual feedback becomes misaligned with the limb.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Visual feedback is more accurate, but proprioceptive feedback is faster. How should you integrate these sources of feedback to guide limb movement? As predicted by dynamic Bayesian models, the size of the muscle response to a mechanical disturbance was essentially the same whether visual feedback was present or not. Only under artificial conditions, such as when shifting the position of a cursor representing hand position, can one observe a muscle response from visual feedback.

Reliability of the thumb localizing test and its validity against quantitative measures with a robotic device in patients with hemiparetic stroke.

OBJECTIVES: To examine the inter-rater reliability of the thumb localizing test (TLT) and its validity against quantitative measures of proprioception. METHODS: The TLT was assessed by two raters in a standardized manner in 40 individuals with hemiparetic stroke. Inter-rater reliability was examined with weighted Kappa. For the quantitative measures, a bimanual matching task in a planar robotic device was performed. Without vision, each participant moved the unaffected hand to the perceived mirrored location of the affected hand, which was passively moved by the robot. Three measures were taken after 54 trials: Variability, trial-to-trial variability of the mirrored-matched locations; Area, the ratio of the area enclosed by the active hand relative to the passive hand; and Shift, systematic shifts between the passive and active hands. The correlation between the TLT and each robotic measure was examined with Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. RESULTS: The overall weighted kappa of the TLT was 0.84 (P<0.001). The TLT correlated highly with Area (r = -0.71, P<0.001) and moderately with Variability (r = 0.40, P = 0.011). No significant correlation was found between the TLT and Shift. CONCLUSIONS: The TLT had a high inter-rater reliability, and was validated against quantitative measures of proprioception reflecting the perceived area of movement and variability of the limb location.

Two-stage regression of high-density scalp electroencephalograms visualizes force regulation signaling during muscle contraction.

OBJECTIVE: A critical feature for the maintenance of precise skeletal muscle force production by the human brain is its ability to configure motor function activity dynamically and adaptively in response to visual and somatosensory information. Existing studies have concluded that not only the sensorimotor area but also distributed cortical areas act cooperatively in the generation of motor commands for voluntary force production to the desired level. However, less attention has been paid to such physiological mechanisms in conventional brain-computer interface (BCI) design and implementation. We proposed a new, physiologically inspired two-stage decoding method to see its contribution on accuracy improvement of BCI. APPROACH: We performed whole-head high-density scalp electroencephalographic (EEG) recording during a right finger force-matching task at three strength levels (20%, 40%, and 60% maximal voluntary contraction following a resting state). A two-stage regression approach was employed that decodes muscle contraction level from EEG signals in the multi-level force-matching task and translates them into: (1) presence/absence of muscle contraction as a first stage; and (2) muscle contraction level as a second stage. Dimensionality reduction of the EEG signals, using principal component analysis, avoided multicollinearity during multiple regression, and data-driven stepwise multiple regression identified EEG components that were involved in the multi-level force-matching task. MAIN RESULTS: An alternatively tuned two-stage regressor accurately decoded muscle contraction level with online processing rather than the conventional decoders, and identified EEG components that were related to voluntary force production. Relaxation/contraction state-dependent EEG components were localized dominantly in the contralateral parieto-temporal regions, whereas multi-level force regulation-dependent EEG components came from the fronto-parietal regions. SIGNIFICANCE: Our findings identify respective cortical signalings during relaxation/contraction and multi-level force regulation using a sensor-based approach with EEG. Simulation-based assessment of the current physiologically inspired decoding technique proved improved accuracy in online BCI control.

Correlation between changes in functional connectivity in the dorsal attention network and the after-effects induced by prism adaptation in healthy humans: A dataset of resting-state fMRI and pointing after prism adaptation.

It has been reported that it is possible to observe transient changes in resting-state functional connectivity (FC) in the attention networks of healthy adults during treatment with prism adaptation. by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (see "Prism adaptation changes resting-state functional connectivity in the dorsal stream of visual attention networks in healthy adults: A fMRI study" (Tsujimoto et al., 2018) [1]. Recent neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies support the idea that prism adaptation (PA) affects the visual attention and sensorimotor networks, which include the parietal cortex and cerebellum. These data demonstrate the effect of PA on resting-state functional connectivity between the primary motor cortex and cerebellum. Additionally, it evaluates changes of resting-state FC before and after PA in healthy individuals using fMRI. Analyses focus on FC between the primary motor cortex and cerebellum, and the correlation between changes in FC and its after-effects following a single PA session. Here, we show data that demonstrate the change in resting-state FC between the primary motor cortex and cerebellum, as well as a correlation between the change ratio of FC and the amplitude of the after-effect.

Acquisition of a mental strategy to control a virtual tail via brain-computer interface.

The objective of the present study was to clarify the variation in and properties of mental images and policies used to regulate specific image selection when learning to control a brain-computer interface. Healthy volunteers performed a reaching task with a virtually generated monkey tail-like object on a computer monitor by regulating event-related desynchronization (ERD) on the buttock area of the sensorimotor cortex as recorded by electroencephalogram (EEG). Participants were instructed to find a free image by which the tail was well controlled. Seven participants frequently returned to specific images that were mostly unrelated to a tail, and returned to these images on the last day of training. The ERD levels were greater during use of those selected images versus when selected images were not employed. Our results suggest that individuals adopted a mental strategy where they imagine what would reduce the prediction error between the predicted and actual BCI actions.

Prism adaptation changes resting-state functional connectivity in the dorsal stream of visual attention networks in healthy adults: A fMRI study.

Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) can be defined as a failure to orient to contra-lesional stimuli in the absence of either sensory or motor defects. Although the behavioral and clinical effects of prism adaptation (PA) are widely accepted, its underlying mechanisms are still controversial. However, recent neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies support the idea that PA affects the visual attention and sensorimotor networks including in the parietal cortex and cerebellum. We investigate the effect of PA on functional connectivity (FC) in attention and sensorimotor networks, evaluating changes of resting-state FC before and after PA in healthy individuals using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). MR sessions were conducted before PA, after PA (Post1), and 1 h after PA (Post2). The FC between the right frontal eye (FEF) field and the right intraparietal sulcus was significantly decreased at Post1 and that between the right FEF and the right anterior cingulate cortex was significantly increased after PA and recovered within 1 h. This is the first study to demonstrate transient changes of resting-state FC in the right dorsal attention network (DAN) by PA in healthy adults using fMRI. These results will contribute to the elucidation of the underling mechanism of PA therapy and to devising new therapies for USN and/or other higher cortical dysfunctions.

Structural Gray Matter Changes in the Hippocampus and the Primary Motor Cortex on An-Hour-to-One- Day Scale Can Predict Arm-Reaching Performance Improvement.

Recent studies have revealed rapid (e.g., hours to days) training-induced cortical structural changes using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Currently, there is great interest in studying how such a rapid brain structural change affects behavioral improvement. Structural reorganization contributes to memory or enhanced information processing in the brain and may increase its capability of skill learning. If the gray matter (GM) is capable of such rapid structural reorganization upon training, the extent of volume increase may characterize the learning process. To shed light on this issue, we conducted a case series study of 5-day visuomotor learning using neuroanatomical imaging, and analyzed the effect of rapid brain structural change on motor performance improvement via regression analysis. Participants performed an upper-arm reaching task under left-right mirror-reversal for five consecutive days; T1-weighted MR imaging was performed before training, after the first and fifth days, and 1 week and 1 month after training. We detected increase in GM volume on the first day (i.e., a few hours after the first training session) in the primary motor cortex (M1), primary sensory cortex (S1), and in the hippocampal areas. Notably, regression analysis revealed that individual differences in such short-term increases were associated with the learning levels after 5 days of training. These results suggest that GM structural changes are not simply a footprint of previous motor learning but have some relationship with future motor learning. In conclusion, the present study provides new insight into the role of structural changes in causing functional changes during motor learning.

Corticomuscular coherence reflects somatosensory feedback gains during motor adaptation.

Beta-band corticomuscular coherence (CMC) observed between the sensorimotor cortex activity and contracting muscle is declaratively described as a neurophysiological reflection of sensorimotor binding. However, much remains unknown about the functional meaning of 'sensorimotor binding.' The efficacy of information binding in the sensorimotor system is assumed to be influenced by the gain of the feedback controller, which is regulated through a process that may in part be implemented in the primary sensorimotor cortex (SM1). Thus, we predicted that CMC is modulated together with feedback gains during motor learning. We examined this hypothesis using a hand-reaching adaptation task under a novel dynamical environment. CMC modulation was assessed before and after adaptation, and feedback gains were probed by long latency triggered muscle reactions. Overall, we found that CMC significantly decreased during the adaptation period, and such CMC decrease was associated with the decreased long latency reflexes. These results suggest that CMC has a related function to modulation of feedback gains. Our findings provided an electrophysiological hallmark of the sensorimotor binding process, which was stated as a function of CMC but poorly understood.

Ipsilateral EEG mu rhythm reflects the excitability of uncrossed pathways projecting to shoulder muscles.

BACKGROUND: Motor planning, imagery or execution is associated with event-related desynchronization (ERD) of mu rhythm oscillations (8-13 Hz) recordable over sensorimotor areas using electroencephalography (EEG). It was shown that motor imagery involving distal muscles, e.g. finger movements, results in contralateral ERD correlating with increased excitability of the contralateral corticospinal tract (c-CST). Following the rationale that purposefully increasing c-CST excitability might facilitate motor recovery after stroke, ERD recently became an attractive target for brain-computer interface (BCI)-based neurorehabilitation training. It was unclear, however, whether ERD would also reflect excitability of the ipsilateral corticospinal tract (i-CST) that mainly innervates proximal muscles involved in e.g. shoulder movements. Such knowledge would be important to optimize and extend ERD-based BCI neurorehabilitation protocols, e.g. to restore shoulder movements after stroke. Here we used single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) targeting the ipsilateral primary motor cortex to elicit motor evoked potentials (MEPs) of the trapezius muscle. To assess whether ERD reflects excitability of the i-CST, a correlation analysis between between MEP amplitudes and ipsilateral ERD was performed. METHODS: Experiment 1 consisted of a motor execution task during which 10 healthy volunteers performed elevations of the shoulder girdle or finger pinching while a 128-channel EEG was recorded. Experiment 2 consisted of a motor imagery task during which 16 healthy volunteers imagined shoulder girdle elevations or finger pinching while an EEG was recorded; the participants simultaneously received randomly timed, single-pulse TMS to the ipsilateral primary motor cortex. The spatial pattern and amplitude of ERD and the amplitude of the agonist muscle's TMS-induced MEPs were analyzed. RESULTS: ERDs occurred bilaterally during both execution and imagery of shoulder girdle elevations, but were lateralized to the contralateral hemisphere during finger pinching. We found that trapezius MEPs increased during motor imagery of shoulder elevations and correlated with ipsilateral ERD amplitudes. CONCLUSIONS: Ipsilateral ERD during execution and imagery of shoulder girdle elevations appears to reflect the excitability of uncrossed pathways projecting to the shoulder muscles. As such, ipsilateral ERD could be used for neurofeedback training of shoulder movement, aiming at reanimation of the i-CST.

Robotic Assessment of Upper Limb Function after Proximal Humeral Fracture: Personal Experience as A Patient and Occupational Therapist.

Robotics is an emerging field in rehabilitation medicine. Robots have the potential to complement traditional clinical assessments because they can measure functions more precisely and quantitatively than current clinical assessments. We present a patient with a proximal humeral fracture whose recovery process was evaluated with an exoskeleton robotic device. The patient, a 34-year-old woman, suffered a left proximal humeral fracture while snowboarding. She is an occupational therapist and is the first author of this study. With conservative therapy, fracture union was seen on X-ray at 6 weeks post-injury. At that time, the patient was permitted to move her left upper limb actively within the tolerance of pain. We assessed the function of the injured upper limb at 6, 7, and 12 weeks post-injury with the KINARM exoskeleton robotic device and with conventional clinical measures. The active range of motion and the muscle strength of the left shoulder improved over time. Using robotic assessment, the precise movement profiles, position sense, and functional ability of both arms were quantified and also showed progressive improvement over time. Assessment with a robotic device of the recovery process after proximal humeral fracture allowed quantification of functional impairments that could not be felt subjectively nor identified with conventional clinical assessments.

Learning feedback and feedforward control in a mirror-reversed visual environment.

When we learn a novel task, the motor system needs to acquire both feedforward and feedback control. Currently, little is known about how the learning of these two mechanisms relate to each other. In the present study, we tested whether feedforward and feedback control need to be learned separately, or whether they are learned as common mechanism when a new control policy is acquired. Participants were trained to reach to two lateral and one central target in an environment with mirror (left-right)-reversed visual feedback. One group was allowed to make online movement corrections, whereas the other group only received visual information after the end of the movement. Learning of feedforward control was assessed by measuring the accuracy of the initial movement direction to lateral targets. Feedback control was measured in the responses to sudden visual perturbations of the cursor when reaching to the central target. Although feedforward control improved in both groups, it was significantly better when online corrections were not allowed. In contrast, feedback control only adaptively changed in participants who received online feedback and remained unchanged in the group without online corrections. Our findings suggest that when a new control policy is acquired, feedforward and feedback control are learned separately, and that there may be a trade-off in learning between feedback and feedforward controllers.

Clinical usefulness and validity of robotic measures of reaching movement in hemiparetic stroke patients.

BACKGROUND: Various robotic technologies have been developed recently for objective and quantitative assessment of movement. Among them, robotic measures derived from a reaching task in the KINARM Exoskeleton device are characterized by their potential to reveal underlying motor control in reaching movements. The aim of this study was to examine the clinical usefulness and validity of these robot-derived measures in hemiparetic stroke patients. METHODS: Fifty-six participants with a hemiparetic arm due to chronic stroke were enrolled. The robotic assessment was performed using the Visually Guided Reaching (VGR) task in the KINARM Exoskeleton, which allows free arm movements in the horizontal plane. Twelve parameters were derived based on motor control theory. The following clinical assessments were also administered: the proximal upper limb section in the Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA-UE(A)), the proximal upper limb part in the Stroke Impairment Assessment Set (SIAS-KM), the Modified Ashworth Scale for the affected elbow flexor muscles (MAS elbow), and seven proximal upper limb tasks in the Wolf Motor Function Test (WMFT). To explore which robotic measures represent deficits of motor control in the affected arm, the VGR parameters in the paretic arm were compared with those in the non-paretic arm using the Wilcoxon signed rank test. Then, to explore which VGR parameters were related to overall motor control regardless of the paresis, correlations between the paretic and non-paretic arms were examined. Finally, to investigate the relationships between the robotic measures and the clinical scales, correlations between the VGR parameters and clinical scales were investigated. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients were used for all correlational analyses. RESULTS: Eleven VGR parameters on the paretic side were significantly different from those on the non-paretic side with large effect sizes (|effect size| = 0.76-0.87). Ten VGR parameters correlated significantly with FMA-UE(A) (|r| = 0.32-0.60). Eight VGR parameters also showed significant correlations with SIAS-KM (|r| = 0.42-0.49), MAS elbow (|r| = 0.44-0.48), and the Functional Ability Scale of the WMFT (|r| = 0.52-0.64). CONCLUSIONS: The robot-derived measures could successfully differentiate between the paretic arm and the non-paretic arm and were valid in comparison to the well-established clinical scales.

Alteration of a motor learning rule under mirror-reversal transformation does not depend on the amplitude of visual error.

Human's sophisticated motor learning system paradoxically interferes with motor performance when visual information is mirror-reversed (MR), because normal movement error correction further aggravates the error. This error-increasing mechanism makes performing even a simple reaching task difficult, but is overcome by alterations in the error correction rule during the trials. To isolate factors that trigger learners to change the error correction rule, we manipulated the gain of visual angular errors when participants made arm-reaching movements with mirror-reversed visual feedback, and compared the rule alteration timing between groups with normal or reduced gain. Trial-by-trial changes in the visual angular error was tracked to explain the timing of the change in the error correction rule. Under both gain conditions, visual angular errors increased under the MR transformation, and suddenly decreased after 3-5 trials with increase. The increase became degressive at different amplitude between the two groups, nearly proportional to the visual gain. The findings suggest that the alteration of the error-correction rule is not dependent on the amplitude of visual angular errors, and possibly determined by the number of trials over which the errors increased or statistical property of the environment. The current results encourage future intensive studies focusing on the exact rule-change mechanism.

Transcranial direct current stimulation enhances mu rhythm desynchronization during motor imagery that depends on handedness.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can modulate the amplitude of event-related desynchronization (ERD) that appears on the electroencephalogram (EEG) during motor imagery. To study the effect of handedness on the modulating effect of tDCS, we compared the difference in tDCS-boosted ERD during dominant and non-dominant hand motor imagery. EEGs were recorded over the left sensorimotor cortex of seven healthy right-handed volunteers, and we measured ERD induced either by dominant or non-dominant hand motor imagery. Ten minutes of anodal tDCS was then used to increase the cortical excitability of the contralateral primary motor cortex (M1), and ERD was measured again. With anodal tDCS, we observed only a small increase in ERD during non-dominant hand motor imagery, whereas the same stimulation induced a prominent increase in ERD during dominant hand motor imagery. This trend was most obvious in the participants who used their dominant hand more frequently. Although our study is preliminary because of a small sample size, these results suggest that the increase in ERD by applying anodal tDCS was stronger on the dominant side than on the non-dominant side. The background excitability of M1 may determine the strength of the effect of anodal tDCS on ERD by hand motor imagery.

Three-dimensional motion analysis of arm-reaching movements in healthy and hemispinalized common marmosets.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating neurological injury. At present, pharmacological, regenerative, and rehabilitative approaches are widely studied as therapeutic interventions for motor recovery after SCI. Preclinical research has been performed on model animals with experimental SCI, and those studies often evaluate hand and arm motor function using various indices, such as the success rate of the single pellet reaching test and the grip force. However, compensatory movement strategies, involuntary muscle contraction, and the subject's motivation could affect the scores, resulting in failure to assess direct recovery from impairment. Identifying appropriate assessments of motor impairment is thus important for understanding the mechanisms of motor recovery. In this study, we developed a motion capture system capable of reconstructing three-dimensional hand positions with millimeter and millisecond accuracy and evaluated hand kinematics during food retrieval movement in both healthy and hemispinalized common marmosets. As a result, the endpoint jerk, representing the accuracy of hand motor control, was asserted to be an appropriate index of upper limb motor impairment by eliminating the influence of the subject's motivation, involuntary muscle contraction, and compensatory strategies. The result also suggested that the kinematics of the limb more consistently reflects motor restoration from deficit due to spinal cord injury than the performance in the single pellet reaching test. Because of recent attention devoted to the common marmoset as a nonhuman primate model for human diseases, the present study, which clarified arm-reaching movements in spinalized marmosets, provides fundamental knowledge for future therapeutic studies.

Different strategy of hand choice after learning of constant and incremental dynamical perturbation in arm reaching.

In daily life, we encounter situations where we must quickly decide which hand to use for a motor action. Here, we investigated whether the hand chosen for a motor action varied over a short timescale (i.e., hours) with changes in arm dynamics. Participants performed a reaching task in which they moved a specified hand to reach a target on a virtual reality display. During the task, a resistive viscous force field was abruptly applied to only the dominant hand (DH). To evaluate changes in hand choice caused by this perturbation, participants performed an interleaved choice test in which they could freely choose either hand for reaching. Furthermore, to investigate the effect of temporal changes on arm dynamics and hand choice, we exposed the same participants to another condition in which the force field was introduced gradually. When the abrupt force was applied, use of the perturbed hand significantly decreased and not changed during the training. In contrast, when the incremental force was applied, use of the perturbed hand gradually decreased as force increased. Surprisingly, even though the final amount of force was identical between the two conditions, hand choice was significantly biased toward the unperturbed hand in the gradual condition. These results suggest that time-varying changes in arm dynamics may have a greater influence on hand choice than the amplitude of the resistant force itself.

Developing a new experimental system for an undergraduate laboratory exercise to teach theories of visuomotor learning.

Humans have a flexible motor ability to adapt their movements to changes in the internal/external environment. For example, using arm-reaching tasks, a number of studies experimentally showed that participants adapt to a novel visuomotor environment. These results helped develop computational models of motor learning implemented in the central nervous system. Despite the importance of such experimental paradigms for exploring the mechanisms of motor learning, because of the cost and preparation time, most students are unable to participate in such experiments. Therefore, in the current study, to help students better understand motor learning theories, we developed a simple finger-reaching experimental system using commonly used laptop PC components with an open-source programming language (Processing Motor Learning Toolkit: PMLT). We found that compared to a commercially available robotic arm-reaching device, our PMLT accomplished similar learning goals (difference in the error reduction between the devices, P = 0.10). In addition, consistent with previous reports from visuomotor learning studies, the participants showed after-effects indicating an adaptation of the motor learning system. The results suggest that PMLT can serve as a new experimental system for an undergraduate laboratory exercise of motor learning theories with minimal time and cost for instructors.

Simultaneous processing of information on multiple errors in visuomotor learning.

The proper association between planned and executed movements is crucial for motor learning because the discrepancies between them drive such learning. Our study explored how this association was determined when a single action caused the movements of multiple visual objects. Participants reached toward a target by moving a cursor, which represented the right hand's position. Once every five to six normal trials, we interleaved either of two kinds of visual perturbation trials: rotation of the cursor by a certain amount (±15°, ±30°, and ±45°) around the starting position (single-cursor condition) or rotation of two cursors by different angles (+15° and -45°, 0° and 30°, etc.) that were presented simultaneously (double-cursor condition). We evaluated the aftereffects of each condition in the subsequent trial. The error sensitivity (ratio of the aftereffect to the imposed visual rotation) in the single-cursor trials decayed with the amount of rotation, indicating that the motor learning system relied to a greater extent on smaller errors. In the double-cursor trials, we obtained a coefficient that represented the degree to which each of the visual rotations contributed to the aftereffects based on the assumption that the observed aftereffects were a result of the weighted summation of the influences of the imposed visual rotations. The decaying pattern according to the amount of rotation was maintained in the coefficient of each imposed visual rotation in the double-cursor trials, but the value was reduced to approximately 40% of the corresponding error sensitivity in the single-cursor trials. We also found a further reduction of the coefficients when three distinct cursors were presented (e.g., -15°, 15°, and 30°). These results indicated that the motor learning system utilized multiple sources of visual error information simultaneously to correct subsequent movement and that a certain averaging mechanism might be at work in the utilization process.

Cross talk in implicit assignment of error information during bimanual visuomotor learning.

When a neural movement controller, called an "internal model," is adapted to a novel environment, the movement error needs to be appropriately associated with the controller. However, their association is not necessarily guaranteed for bimanual movements in which two controllers--one for each hand--result in two movement errors. Considering the implicit nature of the adaptation process, the movement error of one hand can be erroneously associated with the controller of the other hand. Here, we investigated this credit-assignment problem in bimanual movement by having participants perform bimanual, symmetric back-and-forth movements while displaying the position of the right hand only with a cursor. In the training session, the cursor position was gradually rotated clockwise, such that the participants were unaware of the rotation. The movement of the right hand gradually rotated counterclockwise as a consequence of adaptation. Although the participants knew that the cursor reflected the movement of the right hand, such gradual adaptation was also observed for the invisible left hand, especially when the cursor was presented on the left side of the display. Thus the movement error of the right hand was implicitly assigned to the left-hand controller. Such cross talk in credit assignment might influence motor adaptation performance, even when two cursors are presented; the adaptation was impaired when the rotations imposed on the cursors were opposite compared with when they were in the same direction. These results indicate the inherent presence of cross talk in the process of associating action with consequence in bimanual movement.