Grasping a fruit. Hands do what flavour says

Previous researchonmultisensoryintegrationduringgoal-directednaturalactionsreportedthatvisual, proprioceptive,auditoryandorthonasalolfactorystimulationhastheabilitytoinfluencemotorcontrol. In thisstudy,weusedkinematicstoinvestigatetheintegrationbetweenvisionandflavourperception during reach-to-graspmovements.Participantswererequestedtodrinkasipofflavouredsolutionand then graspanobjectpresentedincentralvision.Theresultsindicatethatwhentheobjectsevokedbythe flavour andbythevisualtargetwereofasimilarsize(i.e.,largeorsmall)andevokedthesamekindof hand shapinginordertobegrasped(i.e.,congruentcondition)facilitationeffectsemerged.Conversely, when theobjectevokedbytheflavourandbythevisualtargetwasofadifferentsizeandevokeda differentkindofhandshapinginordertobegrasped(i.e.,incongruentcondition)interferenceeffects emerged.Interferenceeffects,however,wereonlyevidentforthecombinationinvolvingalargevisual target anda‘small’flavour.Whencomparinghandkinematicsbetweenthecongruentanda‘noflavour’ condition(i.e.,water),facilitationeffectsemergedinfavouroftheformercondition.Takentogether, these resultsindicatethecontributionofcomplexchemosensorystimulifortheplanningandexecution of visuallyguidedreachtograspmovements.And,contributetothecurrentdebateregardingthe multisensorynatureofthesensorimotortransformationsunderlyingmotorperformance.