Fig. 3

Motor adaptation assessed with table tennis paradigm. (a) Dot plot illustrates target error dispersions during initial error (block A1) at perturbation onset, final adaptation (block A10) and after effect (block W1). Display of hit points across 56 participants (896 trials per block: 56 participants × 16 trials). Dottet line represents linear trend. Intersection of dashed lines represents target. Box plots illustrate block-related dispersions in vertical and horizontal direction. Dashed lines show target in vertical and horizontal direction. During perturbation onset majority of balls were played too short resulting in large initial errors (orange). In contrast, when perturbation disappears, majority of balls were played too long resulting in target errors in opposite direction (after effect, blue). Gray box illustrates table tennis table. Hit points outside the table were calculated using data-driven linear model³³. (b) Dot plots and line plots (exponential curve fit: y = a · e^{b · x} ; y = Target error, x = Block; Random group: 139 · e^{−0.17 Block}; R² = 0.91; Serial group: 127 · e^{−0.17 Block}; R² = 0.66) showing adaptation-dependent performance changes in terms of spatial deviation from target (Euclidean distance) for random and serial group (lower panel). Double arrows below the block diagram illustrate the included data of the phase-related fNIRS block averages (upper panel).