Long-lasting aftereffect of a single prism adaptation: shifts in vision and proprioception are independent

After a single adaptation session to prisms with gradually incremented shift magnitude, the prism adaptation aftereffect was measured by open loop mid-sagittal pointing (O) to a visual target without visual feedback. This aftereffect corresponded to the summation of the shift in proprioception, measured by straight ahead pointing without vision (S), and the visual straight ahead judgement (V), measured by verbal stopping of an LED moving from two opposite directions. However, the measurement of the aftereffects made over a period of 7 days revealed significantly different decay curves in V, O and S. Surprisingly the S shift was still present up to 7 days after the training, while V had returned to the original level by 2 h, which was the first measurement after subjects returned to a normal visual environment. O had returned to pre-test level after 1 day. After 3 days Wilkinson's (J Exp Psychol 89:250-257, 1971) additive hypothesis (O=S-V) no longer fit the data. Rather "O=Pl-V", where Pl (Pr) is the shift in proprioception measured by passive lateral arm movements from left (right), fitted better during the whole 7 days of aftereffect in our study. Therefore, the aftereffect of our strong prism adaptation revealed, firstly, that classical open loop pointing consisted of aftereffect shifts equal to the summation of the shifts in the two passively measurable aftereffect components, vision (V) and proprioception (Pl), rather than with active straight ahead pointing (S). Secondly, the decay of the shift in visual perception and in passively measurable proprioception is independent. The former decays fast, and the latter decays slowly with two separate waves. Thirdly, we suggest that the use of visual perception-dependent spatial codes for visual-manual transformation and the vision-independent internal egocentric reference frame are mutually exclusive. We proposed a model to explain these possible mechanisms.