Handedness influences the online correction and adaptive response to brief movement perturbations

Although it is well known that the preference of hand usage (i.e., handedness) significantly influences upper limb motor control, the exact performance differences remain poorly characterized and understood. Here we show that the correction to movement perturbations systematically changes based on handedness, with subjects that reported mixed handedness showing behavior that lies between right- and left-handed individuals. In addition, the motion state dependence of the adaptive feed-forward response to single-trial movement disturbances varied between limbs, but was similar for right- and left-handed groups, with the left limb showing more sensitivity to the temporal properties of the perturbation. Our results provide novel insight into how handedness is reflected in the coding of limb motion and may consequently impact bimanual interactions.