Visual-Motor Learning Using Haptic Devices: How Best to Train Surgeons?

Publication Summary

Laparoscopic surgery has revolutionised medicine but requires surgeons to learn new visual-motor mappings. The optimal method for training surgeons is unknown. For instance, it may be easier to learn planar movements when training is constrained to a plane, since this forces the surgeon to develop an appropriate perceptual-motor map. In contrast, allowing the surgeon to move without constraints could improve performance because this provides greater experience of the control dynamics of the device. In order to test between these alternatives, we created an experimental tool that connected a commercially available robotic arm with specialised software that presents visual stimuli and objectively records kinematics. Participants were given the task of generating a series of aiming movements to move a visual cursor to a series of targets. The actions required movement along a horizontal plane, whereas the visual display was a screen positioned perpendicular to this plane (ie, vertically). One group (n=8) rec...