Investigating Different Levels of Bimanual Interaction With a Novel Motor Learning Task: A Behavioural and Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation Study

Abstract

In everyday life, we perform countless movements with our hands. Some, such as writing, drawing, or eating with chopsticks, require one hand alone, whereas others require the skilled interaction of both hands. For bimanual movements, the two hands either perform actions in a similar manner, i.e., with equal contributions between hands like opening a drawer or rope skipping, or actions in a different manner, i.e., with unequal contributions between hands like eating with knife and fork or keyboard typing. Although many daily life tasks require skilled bimanual interactions, our understanding of their behavioural and neurophysiological underpinnings is still sparse (Kelso et al., 1979; Swinnen, 2002; Swinnen and Gooijers, 2015). Bimanual interactions are mainly studied using simple finger tapping, sequence tapping and the simultaneous or alternating flexion/extension of individual fingers (Shammi et al., 1998; Bangert et al., 2010; Takeuchi et al., 2012; Sallard et al., 2014; Koppelmans et al., 2015; Loehrer et al., 2016; Kajal et al., 2017). These studies have advanced our understanding of which regions are involved in bimanual interaction and how they communicate with each other (see for review Swinnen, 2002; Swinnen and Gooijers, 2015), but the largely artificial tasks used remain distant to daily life and often do not require learning.