Trial-by-Trial Adaptation of Movements during Mental Practice under Force Field

• Published in: Computational and mathematical methods in medicine Vol. 2013; no. 2013; pp. 1 - 11
• Main Authors: Anwar, Muhammad Nabeel, Khan, Salman Hameed
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cairo, Egypt Hindawi Puplishing Corporation 01.01.2013; Hindawi Publishing Corporation
• Subjects: Adaptation, Physiological; Biomechanical Phenomena; Computational Biology; Electroencephalography; Feedback, Sensory; Humans; Learning - physiology; Models, Neurological; Movement - physiology; Psychomotor Performance; Robotics
• ISSN: 1748-670X; 1748-6718; 1748-6718
• DOI: 10.1155/2013/109497

Human nervous system tries to minimize the effect of any external perturbing force by bringing modifications in the internal model. These modifications affect the subsequent motor commands generated by the nervous system. Adaptive compensation along with the appropriate modifications of internal model helps in reducing human movement errors. In the current study, we studied how motor imagery influences trial-to-trial learning in a robot-based adaptation task. Two groups of subjects performed reaching movements with or without motor imagery in a velocity-dependent force field. The results show that reaching movements performed with motor imagery have relatively a more focused generalization pattern and a higher learning rate in training direction.