Using virtual reality and video games to study sensorimotor control and learning

While studies of motor control and learning have generally converged on a handful of experimental setups, interest in using virtual reality systems and video games has recently increased. As these technologies are not designed to be scientific tools, there is a risk that what we learn from them is at odds with the dominant paradigms. This thesis aimed to measure and validate certain aspects of these technologies to ensure that they are suitable tools to study motor control and learning. Chapter 2 investigated the motion-to-photon latency of popular virtual reality systems, as latency is known to be deleterious to our ability to control and adapt movements. Through a novel latency measurement technique, it was found that all systems tested showed low levels of latency, below 13ms when motion prediction was effective. This means the observed behaviour should be minimally confounded by lag. A global pandemic necessitated a shift towards online experiments. Chapter 3 contrasted two forms of visual feedback that could be delivered in motor experiments: pointing, where mouse movements translate a cursor across a static background; and looking, where mouse movements rotate the view of a scene so that everything except the cursor moves, consistent with how visual feedback is provided in first-person shooter games. Controlled comparisons showed that participant behaviour was overwhelmingly similar between these two forms of feedback, and looking movements in an aim-trainer style game exhibited a number of well-defined invariant movement properties. Chapter 4 further investigated these similarities by comparing adaptation to a 30° visuomotor rotation between visual contexts, finding that learning proceeded similarly between contexts, transferred from a trained to untrained context, and appeared to be centred around planned movement vectors of the hand. These results suggest that motor control and learning can be studied effectively using virtual reality and video games.