
Guy AvrahamUniversity of California, Berkeley | UCB
Guy Avraham
PhD
About
36
Publications
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Introduction
Guy Avraham currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley. Guy does research in Motor Control, Motor Learning and Cognitive Psychology.
Additional affiliations
January 2018 - present
Education
October 2012 - November 2016
October 2008 - September 2011
August 2005 - August 2008
Publications
Publications (36)
Motor learning is often viewed as a unitary process that operates outside of conscious awareness. This perspective has led to the development of sophisticated models designed to elucidate the mechanisms of implicit sensorimotor learning. In this review, we argue for a broader perspective, emphasizing the contribution of explicit strategies to senso...
Savings refers to the gain in performance upon relearning a task. In sensorimotor adaptation, savings is tested by having participants adapt to perturbed feedback and, following a washout block during which the system resets to baseline, presenting the same perturbation again. While savings has been observed with these tasks, we have shown that the...
Implicit adaptation has been regarded as a rigid process that automatically operates in response to movement errors to keep the sensorimotor system precisely calibrated. This hypothesis has been challenged by recent evidence suggesting flexibility in this learning process. One compelling line of evidence comes from work suggesting that this form of...
Binary feedback, providing information solely about task success or failure, can be sufficient to drive motor learning. While binary feedback can induce explicit adjustments in movement strategy, it remains unclear if this type of feedback also induces implicit learning. We examined this question in a center-out reaching task by gradually moving an...
Motor learning is often viewed as a unitary process that operates outside of conscious awareness. This perspective has led to the development of sophisticated models designed to elucidate the mechanisms of implicit sensorimotor learning. In this review we argue for a broader perspective, emphasizing the contribution of explicit strategies to sensor...
When interacting with objects with unfamiliar dynamics, the sensorimotor system uses haptic information to develop internal representations of the new dynamics. These representations are subsequently used to manipulate the objects by applying predictive forces that comply with the mechanical properties of the objects. In a recent study (Farajian et...
Binary feedback, providing information solely about task success or failure, can be sufficient to drive motor learning. While binary feedback can induce explicit adjustments in movement strategy, it remains unclear if this type of feedback also induce implicit learning. We examined this question in a center-out reaching task by gradually moving an...
Cerebellar-dependent implicit adaptation has been regarded as a rigid process that automatically operates in response to movement errors in order to keep the sensorimotor system calibrated. This hypothesis has been challenged by recent evidence suggesting flexibility in this learning process. One compelling line of evidence comes from work suggesti...
Traditional associative learning tasks focus on the formation of associations between salient events and arbitrary stimuli that predict those events. This is exemplified in cerebellar-dependent delay eyeblink conditioning, where arbitrary cues such as a light or tone act as conditioning stimuli (CSs) that predict aversive sensations at the cornea (...
It is widely recognized that sensorimotor learning is enhanced when the feedback is provided throughout the movement compared to when it is provided at the end of the movement. However, the source of this advantage is unclear: Continuous feedback is more ecological, dynamic, and available earlier than endpoint feedback. Here we assess the relative...
In a recent paper entitled, An implicit memory of errors limits human sensorimotor adaptation, Albert and colleagues presented a model in which the adaptive response of the sensorimotor system is flexibly modulated by recent experience, or what they refer to as a memory of errors. This hypothesis stands in contrast to prevailing models in which aut...
Traditional associative learning tasks focus on the formation of associations between salient events and arbitrary stimuli that predict those events. This is exemplified in cerebellar-dependent delay eyeblink conditioning, where arbitrary cues such as a light or tone act as conditioning stimuli that predict aversive sensations at the cornea. Here w...
Collecting data online via crowdsourcing platforms has proven to be a very efficient way to recruit a large and diverse sample. Studies of motor learning, however, have been largely confined to the lab due to the need for special equipment to record movement kinematics and, as such, are typically only accessible to specific participants (e.g., coll...
The motor system demonstrates an exquisite ability to adapt to changes in the environment and to quickly reset when these changes prove transient. If similar environmental changes are encountered in the future, learning may be faster, a phenomenon known as savings. In studies of sensorimotor learning, a central component of savings is attributed to...
Collecting data online via crowdsourcing platforms has proven to be a very efficient way to recruit individuals from a large diverse sample. While many fields in psychology have embraced online studies, the field of motor learning has lagged behind. We suspect this is because of an implicit assumption that the loss of experimental control with onli...
The motor system demonstrates an exquisite ability to adapt to changes in the environment, and to quickly reset when these changes prove transient. If similar environmental changes are encountered in the future, learning may be faster, a phenomenon known as savings. In studies of sensorimotor learning, a central component of savings is attributed t...
Sensorimotor adaptation is driven by sensory prediction errors, the difference between the predicted and actual feedback. When the position of the feedback is made uncertain, motor adaptation is attenuated. This effect, in the context of optimal sensory integration models, has been attributed to the motor system discounting noisy feedback, and thus...
The study of motor planning and learning in humans has undergone a dramatic transformation in the 20 years since this journal's last review of this topic. The behavioral analysis of movement, the foundational approach for psychology, has been complemented by ideas from control theory, computer science, statistics, and, most notably, neuroscience. T...
Motor learning experiments are typically run in-person, exploiting finely calibrated setups (digitizing tablets, robotic manipulandum, full VR displays) that provide high temporal and spatial resolution. However, these experiments come at a cost, not limited to the one-time expense of purchasing equipment but also the substantial time devoted to re...
Sensorimotor adaptation is driven by sensory prediction errors, the difference between the predicted and actual feedback. When the position of the feedback is made uncertain, adaptation is attenuated. This effect, in the context of optimal sensory integration models, has been attributed to a weakening of the error signal driving adaptation. Here we...
Motor adaptation, the adjustment of a motor output in face of changes in the environment, may operate at different rates. When human participants encounter repeated or consistent perturbations, their corrections for the experienced errors are larger compared to when the perturbations are new or inconsistent. Such modulations of error sensitivity we...
The sensory system constantly deals with delayed feedback. Recent studies showed that playing a virtual game of pong with delayed feedback caused hypermetric reaching movements. We investigated whether this effect is associated with a perceptual bias. In addition, we examined the importance of the target in causing hypermetric movements. In a first...
When interacting with the environment, the sensorimotor system faces temporal and spatial discrepancies between sensory inputs, such as delay in sensory information transmission, and asymmetrical visual inputs across space. These discrepancies can affect motor control and the representation of space. We recently showed that adaptation to a laterall...
Motor adaptation, the adjustment of sensorimotor representations in face of changes in the environment, may operate at different rates. When human participants encounter repeated or consistent perturbations, their corrections for the experienced errors are larger compared to when the perturbations are new or inconsistent. Such modulations of error...
In daily interactions, our sensorimotor system accounts for spatial and temporal discrepancies between the senses. Functional lateralization between hemispheres causes differences in attention and in the control of action across the left and right workspaces. In addition, differences in transmission delays between modalities affect movement control...
To accurately estimate the state of the body, the nervous system needs to account for delays between signals from different sensory modalities. To investigate how such delays may be represented in the sensorimotor system, we asked human participants to play a virtual pong game in which the movement of the virtual paddle was delayed with respect to...
To accurately estimate the state of the body, the nervous system needs to account for delays between signals from different sensory modalities. To investigate how such delays may be represented in the sensorimotor system, we asked human participants to play a virtual pong game in which the movement of the virtual paddle was delayed with respect to...
In daily interactions, our sensorimotor system accounts for spatial and temporal discrepancies between the senses. Functional lateralization between hemispheres causes differences in attention and control of action. In addition, differences in transmission delays between modalities affects motor control. Studies on hemispatial neglect syndrome sugg...
To adapt to deterministic force perturbations that depend on the current state of the hand, internal representations are formed to capture the relationships between forces experienced and motion. However, information from multiple modalities travels at different rates, resulting in intermodal delays that require compensation for these internal repr...
The process of sensorimotor adaptation is considered to be driven by errors. While sensory prediction errors, defined as the difference between the planned and the actual movement of the cursor, drive implicit learning processes, target errors (e.g., the distance of the cursor from the target) are thought to drive explicit learning mechanisms. This...
In the Turing test a computer model is deemed to "think intelligently" if it can generate answers that are indistinguishable from those of a human. We developed an analogous Turing-like handshake test to determine if a machine can produce similarly indistinguishable movements. The test is administered through a telerobotic system in which an interr...
In the Turing test, a computer model is deemed to "think intelligently" if it can generate answers indistinguishable from those of a human. We proposed a Turing-like handshake test for testing motor aspects of machine intelligence. The test is administered through a telerobotic system in which an interrogator holds a robotic stylus and interacts wi...
In the Turing test, a computer model is deemed to "think intelligently" if it can generate answers that are not distinguishable from those of a human. However, this test is limited to the linguistic aspects of machine intelligence. A salient function of the brain is the control of movement, and the movement of the human hand is a sophisticated demo...
In the Turing test, a computer model is deemed to "think intelligently" if it can generate answers that are not distinguishable from those of a human. This test is limited to the linguistic aspects of machine intelligence. A salient function of the brain is the control of movement, with the human hand movement being a sophisticated demonstration of...