Motor Control最新文献

The prevalence of phone use has become a major concern for pedestrian safety. Using smartphones while walking reduces pedestrians' ability to perceive the environment by increasing their cognitive, manual, and visual demands. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of common phone tasks (i.e., reading, tapping, gaming) on walking behaviors during outdoor walking. Nineteen young adults were instructed to complete four walking conditions (walking only, walking-reading, walking-tapping, and walking-gaming) along an open corridor. Results showed that all three phone tasks increased participants' neck flexion (i.e., neck kyphosis) during walking. Meanwhile, the reading task showed a greater influence on the temporal aspect during the early phases of a gait cycle. The tapping task lowered the flexion angles of the middle and lower back (i.e., torso lordosis) and induced a longer terminal double support. And the gaming task resulted in a decrease in middle back flexion, a shorter stride length, and a longer terminal double support while walking. Findings from the study confirmed our hypothesis that phone tasks changed pedestrians' physical responses to smartphone distraction while walking. To avoid potential risks caused by the observed posture and gait adaptations, safety precautions (e.g., roadside/electronic warning signals) might be imposed depending on the workload expected by different phone tasks.

This study aimed to investigate individual trial-to-trial performance in three tests to define adaptive regulation as a key feature of expertise in nine-ball. Thirty-one male players were assigned into the low-skilled (n = 11), intermediate (n = 10), or high-skilled groups (n = 10). The power control, cue alignment, and angle tests were selected to assess participants' ability to control the power applied in shots, strike the ball straight, and understand the ball paths, respectively. Error distance and correction of error distance were identified for each shot using 2D video analysis. Results of one-way analysis of variance showed that the high-skilled group performed better in two out of the three tests than the other two groups (p = .010 for the cue alignment test; p = .002 for the angle test). However, the adaptation effect represented by the decreased error distances across trials was not observed. Pearson correlation revealed only a few significant correlations between the error distance and its correction within each participant in all tests (p < .05), and hence, the hypothesis that "low correction happened after small error and vice versa" is not supported.

The efficient coordination of fingertip forces to maintain static equilibrium while grasping an object continues to intrigue scientists. While many studies have explored this coordination, most of these studies assumed that interactions of hands primarily occur with rigid inanimate objects. Instead, our daily interactions with living and nonliving entities involve many dynamic, compliant, or fragile bodies. This paper investigates the fingertip force coordination on a manipulandum that changes its shape while grasping it. We designed a five-finger perturbation system with linear actuators at positions corresponding to each finger that would protrude outward from the center of the handle or retract toward the center of the handle as programmed. The behavior of the perturbed fingers and the other fingers while grasping this device was studied. Based on previous experiments on expanding and contracting handles, we hypothesized that each finger would exhibit a comparable response to similar horizontal perturbations. However, the response of the little finger was significantly different from the other fingers. We speculate that the central nervous system demonstrates preferential recruitment of some fingers over others while performing a task.

Objectives: The prevalence of obesity (OB) has increased in the older adult (OA) population. However, it is not quite clear whether OB exaggerates gait instability and leads to a higher risk of falls in OAs. The first goal of this study was to investigate whether OB is associated with gait alterations and gait asymmetry in OAs. The second goal of this study was to examine relationships between various OB measures with gait measures and gait symmetry measures in OAs.

Methods: A total of 30 OAs were included and categorized according to their body mass index (BMI) values into groups of persons with normal weight (NW), overweight (OW), and OB. Participants were required to complete an anthropometric assessment, a body composition assessment, and overground walking tests.

Results: The group with OB had shorter swing phase, longer stance phase, and shorter single support phase than the NW group. Increased body weight, BMI, visceral adipose tissue mass, and android fat had correlations with shorter swing phase, longer stance phase, and shorter single support phase. Increased body weight and BMI had significantly positive correlations with symmetry index of knee range of motion.

Conclusions: OB may impair gait automation capacity in OAs. Both body weight and BMI remain good measures in terms of establishing correlations with gait stability in OAs. However, the amount of fat mass surrounding the abdomen could be vital to interpreting the alterations in the gait of OAs with obesity.

Biomechanical trajectories are often routed through a chain of processing steps prior to statistical analysis. As changes in processing parameter values can affect these trajectories, care is required when choosing data processing specifics. The purpose of this Research Note was to demonstrate a simple way to propagate data processing parameter uncertainty to statistical inferences regarding biomechanical trajectories. As an example application, the correlation between foot contact duration and vertical ground reaction force during constant-speed treadmill walking was considered. Uncertainty was modeled using plausible-range uniform distributions in three data processing steps, and Monte Carlo simulation was used to construct probabilistic representations of both individual vertical ground reaction force measurements and the ultimate statistical results. Whereas an initial, plausible set of parameter values yielded a significant correlation between contact duration and late-stance vertical ground reaction force, Monte Carlo simulations revealed strong sensitivity, with "significance" being reached in fewer than 40% of simulations, with relatively little net effect of parameter uncertainty magnitude. These results indicate that propagating processing parameter uncertainty to statistical results promotes a cautious, nuanced, and robust view of observed effects. By extension, Monte Carlo simulations may yield greater interpretive consistency across studies involving data processing uncertainties.

Gravity provides critical information for the adjustment of body movement or manipulation of the handheld object. Indeed, the changes in gravity modify the mechanical constraints of prehensile actions, which may be accompanied by the changes in control strategies. The current study examined the effect of the gravitational force of a handheld object on the control strategies for subactions of multidigit prehension. A total of eight subjects performed prehensile tasks while grasping and lifting the handle by about 250 mm along the vertical direction. The experiment consisted of two conditions: lifting gravity-induced (1g) and weightless (0g) handheld objects. The weightless object condition was implemented utilizing a robot arm that produced a constant antigravitational force of the handle. The current analysis was limited to the two-dimensional grasping plane, and the notion of the virtual finger was employed to formulate the cause-effect chain of elemental variables during the prehensile action. The results of correlation analyses confirmed that decoupled organization of two subsets of mechanical variables was observed in both 1g and 0g conditions. While lifting the handle, the two subsets of variables were assumed to contribute to the grasping and rotational equilibrium, respectively. Notably, the normal forces of the thumb and virtual finger had strong positive correlations. In contrast, the normal forces had no significant relationship with the variables as to the moment of force. We conclude that the gravitational force had no detrimental effect on adjustments of the mechanical variables for the rotational action and its decoupling from the grasping equilibrium.

Startling acoustic stimulation (SAS) causes a transient effect on the primary motor cortex (M1) nonreflexively. It reduces the cortical excitability at rest, but not during voluntary contraction. However, the effect of SAS on intracortical activity is not clear. The purpose of this study was to investigate the SAS effect on short-interval intracortical inhibition and intracortical facilitation using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Eleven healthy individuals performed isometric elbow flexion at 10% of maximum voluntary contraction on the dominant side with a real-time visual target (i.e., M1 preactivation) or at rest. TMS was delivered to the M1 ipsilateral to elbow flexion without or with SAS delivered 90 ms prior to TMS. There were three TMS delivery conditions: (a) single pulse, (b) short-interval intracortical inhibition, and (c) intracortical facilitation. TMS-induced motor-evoked potential (MEP) was compared between predetermined TMS and SAS conditions at rest and during ipsilateral voluntary contraction. We confirmed that SAS decreased the MEP amplitude at rest, but not during M1 preactivation. SAS caused task-specific effects on intracortical excitability. Specifically, SAS increased intracortical facilitation at rest and during voluntary contraction. However, SAS decreased short-interval intracortical inhibition only during M1 preactivation. Collectively, our results suggest that SAS transiently influences the motor cortex excitability, possibly via its activation of higher centers, to achieve a visually guided goal-directed task.

This review of movement stability, optimality, and agility is based on the theory of motor control with changes in spatial referent coordinates for the effectors, the principle of abundance, and the uncontrolled manifold hypothesis. A new optimality principle is suggested based on the concept of optimal sharing corresponding to a vector in the space of elemental variables locally orthogonal to the uncontrolled manifold. Motion along this direction is associated with minimal components along the relatively unstable directions within the uncontrolled manifold leading to a minimal motor equivalent motion. For well-practiced actions, this task-specific criterion is followed in spaces of referent coordinates. Consequences of the suggested framework include trade-offs among stability, optimality, and agility, unintentional changes in performance, hand dominance, finger specialization, individual traits in performance, and movement disorders in neurological patients.

Maintaining a consistent relationship between each footfall and the body's motion is a key mechanism to maintain balance while walking. However, environmental features, for example, puddles/obstacles, impose additional constraints on foot placement. This study investigated how healthy young individuals alter foot placements to simultaneously manage body-centric and environmental constraints during an obstacle-crossing task. Consistent step length promotes balance for all steps, whereas accurate foot placement around the obstacle is essential to avoid a trip. While crossing an obstacle, any error in positioning one foot relative to the obstacle can be compensated by selecting the placement of the subsequent step. However, compensation will necessarily alter step length from its average value. The interstep covariance index computed from two consecutive foot placements was used to quantify this tradeoff between body-centric and environmental constraints for six consecutive steps while approaching, crossing, and resuming unobstructed gait after crossing the obstacle. The index declined only when either one or both feet were adjacent to the obstacle. The decline was driven in part by a tendency toward higher step length variability. Thus, changes in the stepping patterns to address the environmental constraint occurred at the cost of the body-centric constraint. However, the step length never ceased to be controlled; the interstep covariance index was positive for all steps. Overall, participants adapted foot placement control to account for the larger threat to balance. The environmental constraint was prioritized only when a potential trip posed greater threat to balance compared with the threat posed by variable step length.