Fig. 1

Illustrative sketch of the principle of selection of trained movements, based on the steepest gradients in a hypothetical motor performance profile (e.g. reaching aiming; vertical axis) measured across some particular task parameter (e.g. movement direction; horizontal axis); for simplicity, we show here a single dimension. The selected movements (grey horizontal bars) correspond to the regions with the steepest performance gradients, indicated by dashed ellipses. This movement selection principle can be applied where movement tasks can be defined by one or more continuous parameters, i.e. in a 1D, 2D, or higher dimensional map as long as the derivative of performance can be calculated. In this study we applied this principle on two measures of reaching performance (ability to move and ability to aim) each measured across two dimensions of the task (target location and movement direction)