Eye-hand coordination beyond vision: preceding gaze history shapes reaching memories

Skilled reaching behaviors, such as grasping a cup or catching a ball, require adaptive changes in response to error signals. Our natural reaches are usually coordinated with preceding eye movements. Despite this behavioral relevance, the potential linkage between preceding eye movements and memory formation for reaching has been largely overlooked. We show that two opposing visuomotor maps for reach, which normally prevent learning due to interference, can be learned when each is associated with a different immediately preceding eye movement. We further show that the generalization pattern of reach learning across different gaze conditions can be explained by the gaze state’s distance computed with temporal weighting. These findings indicate that reaching memories are encoded in tight association with the recent history of preceding gaze states. Our results expand the functional role of eye-hand coordination beyond visual guidance, revealing its importance in orchestrating flexible motor learning.