20 posts · 5,060 views
I am a research fellow in computational motor neuroscience at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
The motor chauvinist
20 posts
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- September 29, 2010
- 12:28 PM
- 246 views
Automatic for the reaching
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
Hurrah, a post! I've been quite busy over the last few weeks so I haven't had much time for reading or writing. However, I am attempting to repent of my slacking ways and I came across this nice little paper investigating an aspect of the automatic pilot process.Clearly we are not in conscious control of all of our actions at all times. Some reactions – like moving our hand away when we burn ourselves on a hot stove – are instinctive, reflexive. Reflexes themselves are actually a topic of ho........ Read more »
McIntosh RD, Mulroue A, & Brockmole JR. (2010) How automatic is the hand's automatic pilot? Evidence from dual-task studies. Experimental Brain Research, 206(3), 257-69. PMID: 20820760
- September 2, 2010
- 04:16 PM
- 273 views
Walking sub-optimally: redux
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
I haven’t done this before but I wanted to revisit the post I made last week about sub-optimal walking in the light of new information. You see, we had a journal club about the paper yesterday in which interesting discussions were had about the paper and the results – and the conclusions drawn from those results.If you recall, the central thesis of the paper is that we over-correct for deviations in our stride length and stride time that draw us away from the line of constant velocity (the G........ Read more »
Dingwell JB, John J, & Cusumano JP. (2010) Do humans optimally exploit redundancy to control step variability in walking?. PLoS computational biology, 6(7). PMID: 20657664
- August 30, 2010
- 02:29 PM
- 248 views
A stimulating time
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
While I don’t usually post about clinical work, sometimes a paper just leaps out at me and makes me go, “hmm, that’s interesting!” So it was with this study, which explores the medium-term effects (over five years) of chronic deep-brain stimulation in Parkinson’s disease (PD). I’m by no means a clinician or an expert on PD so I’m very keen to make sure the information in here is correct. Please leave me useful comments if it isn’t!Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative dise........ Read more »
Sturman MM, Vaillancourt DE, Verhagen Metman L, Bakay RA, & Corcos DM. (2010) Effects of five years of chronic STN stimulation on muscle strength and movement speed. Experimental Brain Research, 205(4), 435-43. PMID: 20697699
- August 27, 2010
- 04:40 PM
- 409 views
Walking sub-optimally is the way forward
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
Today we’re going to do something a little different. I’ve been posting a lot about reaching movements, because that’s what I’m most interested in, but it may surprise you to learn that humans do actually have the capacity to move other parts of their bodies as well. I know, I’m as shocked as you are… so! The paper I’m going to cover is about the regulation of step variability in walking. It’s a little longer and more complex than normal, so strap yourselves in.Walking is a hard ........ Read more »
Dingwell JB, John J, & Cusumano JP. (2010) Do humans optimally exploit redundancy to control step variability in walking?. PLoS computational biology, 6(7). PMID: 20657664
- August 23, 2010
- 03:41 PM
- 281 views
Learning without thinking
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
Scratching around on the internet this afternoon on my first day back from holiday, I was kind of reluctant to dive straight back into taking papers apart. After all, I have spent the majority of the last three weeks drinking beer and eating pies in the UK, and the increase in my waistline has most likely been mirrored by the decrease in my critical faculties (as happens when you spend time away from the cutting edge). However, I ran across a really cool little article that reminded me just why ........ Read more »
Taylor JA, Klemfuss NM, & Ivry RB. (2010) An Explicit Strategy Prevails When the Cerebellum Fails to Compute Movement Errors. Cerebellum. PMID: 20697860
- July 27, 2010
- 12:09 PM
- 286 views
The noisy brain
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
Noise is a funny word. When we think of it in the context of everyday life, we tend to focus on distracting background sounds. Distracting from what? Usually whatever we’re doing at the time, whether it’s having a conversation or watching TV. In most cases, what we’re trying to do is interpret some signal – like speech – that’s corrupted by background noise. Neurons in the brain have also often been thought of as sending signals corrupted by noise, which seems to make intuitive sense........ Read more »
Mandelblat-Cerf, Y., Paz, R., & Vaadia, E. (2009) Trial-to-Trial Variability of Single Cells in Motor Cortices Is Dynamically Modified during Visuomotor Adaptation. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(48), 15053-15062. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3011-09.2009
- July 21, 2010
- 04:26 PM
- 232 views
Lazy beats sloppy
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
Today I give in to my inner lazy person (who is, in fact, quite similar to my outer lazy person) and talk about a paper after I’ve just been to a journal club, rather than before. The advantages are that I was reading the paper anyway and I’ve just had an hour of discussion about it so I don’t actually have to think of things to say about it myself. The disadvantages are that, um, it’s lazy? And that’s bad? Perhaps. But I still think it’s better, as we shall see, than sloppy.The prem........ Read more »
Tremblay L, & Nguyen T. (2010) Real-time decreased sensitivity to an audio-visual illusion during goal-directed reaching. PloS one, 5(1). PMID: 20126451
- July 21, 2010
- 12:56 PM
- 257 views
The name defines the thing
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
So, astute readers may notice a name change here - I've decided to go back to my old WordPress blog title (which never had more than five posts over its year-long lifespan, a perfect example of my habit of enthusiastically starting projects and never following through). I used to own the domain motorchauvinist.com but no longer. Oh well. Blogger will do for the moment.Why motor chauvinism? I'd like to disassociate myself from the idea that I am in any way interested a) in cars and b) in denigrat........ Read more »
Wolpert DM, Ghahramani Z, & Flanagan JR. (2001) Perspectives and problems in motor learning. Trends in cognitive sciences, 5(11), 487-494. PMID: 11684481
- July 19, 2010
- 05:16 PM
- 210 views
Far out is not as far out as you think
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
Proprioception is the sense of where your body is in space. It is one of several ways the brain uses sensory information to figure out where your limbs and the rest of you are, along with vision and the semicircular ear canals of the vestibular system (though these are more important in balance). Proprioception is defined as information from the lengths of muscles, the location of joints and receptors in the skin that tell us how much we have stretched it.How, if at all, does the accuracy and pr........ Read more »
Fuentes, C., & Bastian, A. (2009) Where Is Your Arm? Variations in Proprioception Across Space and Tasks. Journal of Neurophysiology, 103(1), 164-171. DOI: 10.1152/jn.00494.2009
- July 12, 2010
- 02:26 PM
- 254 views
It's better to keep what works than to try something new
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
It seems I just can’t leave this topic alone. Last week I blogged about a paper on use-dependent learning, which discussed how it’s not only the errors you make that contribute to your learning of a motor task, but that your movements become more similar to movements you’ve already made. Today’s paper deals with something similar, but from a different perspective: that of optimal feedback control.I discussed OFC in another previous post, but a quick recap of the theory is that to make a ........ Read more »
Ganesh, G., Haruno, M., Kawato, M., & Burdet, E. (2010) Motor memory and local minimization of error and effort, not global optimization, determine motor behavior. Journal of Neurophysiology. DOI: 10.1152/jn.01058.2009
- July 8, 2010
- 01:06 PM
- 241 views
Motor learning changes where you think you are
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
I’ve covered both sensory and motor learning topics on this blog so far, and here’s one that very much mashes the two together. In earlier posts I have written about how we form a percept of the world around us, and about our sense of ownership of our limbs. In today’s paper the authors investigate the effect of learning a motor task on sensory perception itself.They performed a couple of experiments, in slightly different ways, which essentially showed the same result – so I’ll just t........ Read more »
Ostry DJ, Darainy M, Mattar AA, Wong J, & Gribble PL. (2010) Somatosensory plasticity and motor learning. The Journal of Neuroscience, 30(15), 5384-93. PMID: 20392960
- July 5, 2010
- 04:41 PM
- 235 views
Baby (not quite) steps
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
Many non-scientists misunderstand the basic way science works. While there are indeed huge discoveries that fundamentally change the way we think about things, the vast majority of the time published papers are a steady plod onwards, adding in very modest amounts to the staggering array of human knowledge. Often seismic shifts in scientific opinion don’t come from great discoveries but from many scientists reading the literature and arguing among themselves and coming to different conclusions ........ Read more »
Heineman, K., Middelburg, K., & Hadders-Algra, M. (2010) Development of adaptive motor behaviour in typically developing infants. Acta Paediatrica, 99(4), 618-624. DOI: 10.1111/j.1651-2227.2009.01652.x
- June 30, 2010
- 05:40 PM
- 267 views
Errors and use both contribute to learning
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
Learning how to make a reaching movement is, as I’ve said before, a very hard problem. There are so many muscles in the arm and so many ways we can get from one point to another that there are for all intents and purposes an infinite set of ways the brain could choose to send motor commands to achieve the same goal. And yet what we see consistently from people is a very stereotyped kind of movement.How do we learn to make reaching movements in the presence of destabilizing perturbations? The s........ Read more »
Diedrichsen J, White O, Newman D, & Lally N. (2010) Use-dependent and error-based learning of motor behaviors. Journal of Neuroscience, 30(15), 5159-66. PMID: 20392938
- June 25, 2010
- 03:41 PM
- 248 views
You're only allowed one left hand
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
In previous posts I’ve asked how we know where our hands are and how we combine information from our senses. Today’s paper covers both of these topics, and investigates the deeper question of how we incorporate this information into our representation of the body.Body representation essentially splits into two parts: body image and body schema. Body image is how we think about our body, how we see ourselves; disorders in body image can lead to anorexia or myriad other problems. Body schema, ........ Read more »
Newport, R., Pearce, R., & Preston, C. (2009) Fake hands in action: embodiment and control of supernumerary limbs. Experimental Brain Research. DOI: 10.1007/s00221-009-2104-y
- June 23, 2010
- 06:04 PM
- 218 views
The cost of uncertainty
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
Back from my girlfriend-induced hiatus and onto a really interesting paper published ahead of print in the Journal of Neurophysiology. This work asks some questions, and postulates some answers, very similar to the line of thinking I’ve been going down recently – which is, of course, the main reason I find it interesting! (The other reason is that they used parabolic flights. Very cool.)One theory of how the brain performs complex movements in a dynamical environment – like, say, lifting o........ Read more »
Crevecoeur, F., McIntyre, J., Thonnard, J., & Lefevre, P. (2010) Movement Stability under Uncertain Internal Models of Dynamics. Journal of Neurophysiology. DOI: 10.1152/jn.00315.2010
- June 16, 2010
- 05:51 PM
- 247 views
Where you look affects your judgement
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
Our ability to successfully interact with the environment is key to our survival. Much of my work involves figuring out how the brain sends the correct commands to the upper limb that allow us to control it and reach for objects around us. Considering how complex the musculature of the arm is, and how ever-changing the world is around us, this is a non-trivial task. One fundamental question that needs to be solved by the brain’s control system is: How do you know where something is relative to........ Read more »
Fiehler, K., Rösler, F., & Henriques, D. (2010) Interaction between gaze and visual and proprioceptive position judgements. Experimental Brain Research, 203(3), 485-498. DOI: 10.1007/s00221-010-2251-1
- June 14, 2010
- 02:52 PM
- 243 views
How the brain controls the non-body
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
When asked about my research area by people in the pub (this happens probably more than it should, most likely due to the disproportionate amount of time I spend there) I usually reply that I work on motor control, or ‘how the brain controls the body’. Today’s paper by Ganguly and colleagues looks at how the brain can control things without a body. There are some very cool results here.The field of neuroprosthetics, or the control of prosthetic devices by brain activity, is a rapidly emerg........ Read more »
Ganguly, K., & Carmena, J. (2009) Emergence of a Stable Cortical Map for Neuroprosthetic Control. PLoS Biology, 7(7). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000153
- June 14, 2010
- 02:50 PM
- 208 views
Moving generally onward
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
Think of a pianist learning how to play a sequence of chords on the piano in one position, and then playing the same sequence of chords three octaves higher. Her arms and hands will be in different positions relative to her trunk, but she’ll still be able to play the same notes. We call this ability to transfer learnt motor skills from one part of the workspace to another generalization.In today’s paper, the authors investigated how generalization works when you are learning two things at th........ Read more »
Pearson, T., Krakauer, J., & Mazzoni, P. (2010) Learning Not to Generalize: Modular Adaptation of Visuomotor Gain. Journal of Neurophysiology, 103(6), 2938-2952. DOI: 10.1152/jn.01089.2009
- June 14, 2010
- 02:49 PM
- 236 views
Visual dominance is an unreliable hypothesis
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
How do we integrate our disparate senses into a coherent view of the world? We obtain information from many different sensory modalities simultaneously - sight, hearing, touch, etc. - and we use these cues to form a percept of the world around us. But what isn't well known yet is exactly how the brain accomplishes this non-trivial task.For example, what happens if the information from two senses give differing results? How do you adapt and calibrate your senses so that the information you get fr........ Read more »
Burge, J., Girshick, A., & Banks, M. (2010) Visual-Haptic Adaptation Is Determined by Relative Reliability. Journal of Neuroscience, 30(22), 7714-7721. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6427-09.2010
- June 14, 2010
- 02:46 PM
- 221 views
Mood, music and movement
by Carl in The motor chauvinist
We all know that music can have an effect on our mood (or, to use a mildly annoying linguistic contrivance, can affect our affect). And being in a better mood has been consistently shown to improve our performance on cognitive tasks, like verbal reasoning; the influence of serene music on such tasks is also known as the 'Mozart effect'. What's kind of interesting is that this Mozart effect has also been shown to be effective on motor tasks, like complex manual tracking.In the last post I talked ........ Read more »
Bock, O. (2010) Sensorimotor adaptation is influenced by background music. Experimental Brain Research, 203(4), 737-741. DOI: 10.1007/s00221-010-2289-0
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