Association between visuomotor adaptation and mathematics skills.

Abstract

Learning a new motor skill involves multiple cognitive aspects such as attention, planning, prioritizing, execution, and error correction. In current study, we examined whether the students opted for pure mathematics at their undergraduate level have enhanced motor skills as compared to those pursuing biological sciences at the same level of education. A total of twenty subjects participated in a visuomotor adaptation task. The results showed that the overall movement related errors in subjects with mathematics background were lower than the biosciences students (p = 0.04). On contrary the learning index of biosciences students was greater at the beginning of the task (p<0.01). The result shows that the learning a new motor skill is influenced by previous knowledge and educational background and mathematics allows human brain accepting a new motor task correctly.