Complex Upper-Limb Movements Are Generated by Combining Motor Primitives that Scale with the Movement Size

Scientific Reports
Jose Garcia Vivas MirandaPaolo Bonato

Abstract

The hand trajectory of motion during the performance of one-dimensional point-to-point movements has been shown to be marked by motor primitives with a bell-shaped velocity profile. Researchers have investigated if motor primitives with the same shape mark also complex upper-limb movements. They have done so by analyzing the magnitude of the hand trajectory velocity vector. This approach has failed to identify motor primitives with a bell-shaped velocity profile as the basic elements underlying the generation of complex upper-limb movements. In this study, we examined upper-limb movements by analyzing instead the movement components defined according to a Cartesian coordinate system with axes oriented in the medio-lateral, antero-posterior, and vertical directions. To our surprise, we found out that a broad set of complex upper-limb movements can be modeled as a combination of motor primitives with a bell-shaped velocity profile defined according to the axes of the above-defined coordinate system. Most notably, we discovered that these motor primitives scale with the size of movement according to a power law. These results provide a novel key to the interpretation of brain and muscle synergy studies suggesting that human subjec...Continue Reading

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Citations

Dec 18, 2019·The European Journal of Neuroscience·Marcus de Lemos FonsecaJosé Garcia Vivas Miranda
Mar 3, 2021·The Cerebellum·Brandon OubreAnoopum S Gupta
Mar 19, 2021·Physiological Measurement·Shreyasi DattaMarimuthu Palaniswami

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