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Physics of Life Reviews Dec 2023The control of movement in living organisms represents a fundamental task that the brain has evolved to solve. One crucial aspect is how the nervous system organizes the... (Review)
Review
The control of movement in living organisms represents a fundamental task that the brain has evolved to solve. One crucial aspect is how the nervous system organizes the transformation of sensory information into motor commands. These commands lead to muscle activation and subsequent animal movement, which can exhibit complex patterns. One example of such movement is locomotion, which involves the translation of the entire body through space. Central Pattern Generators (CPGs) are neuronal circuits that provide control signals for these movements. Compared to the intricate circuits found in the brain, CPGs can be simplified into networks of neurons that generate rhythmic activation, coordinating muscle movements. Since the 1990s, researchers have developed numerous models of locomotive circuits to simulate different types of animal movement, including walking, flying, and swimming. Initially, the primary goal of these studies was to construct biomimetic robots. However, it became apparent that simplified CPGs alone were not sufficient to replicate the diverse range of adaptive locomotive movements observed in living organisms. Factors such as sensory modulation, higher-level control, and cognitive components related to learning and memory needed to be considered. This necessitated the use of more complex, high-dimensional circuits, as well as novel materials and hardware, in both modeling and robotics. With advancements in high-power computing, artificial intelligence, big data processing, smart materials, and electronics, the possibility of designing a new generation of true bio-mimetic robots has emerged. These robots have the capability to imitate not only simple locomotion but also exhibit adaptive motor behavior and decision-making. This motivation serves as the foundation for the current review, which aims to analyze existing concepts and models of movement control systems. As an illustrative example, we focus on underwater movement and explore the fundamental biological concepts, as well as the mathematical and physical models that underlie locomotion and its various modulations.
Topics: Animals; Swimming; Robotics; Artificial Intelligence; Movement; Locomotion; Walking
PubMed: 38072505
DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2023.10.037 -
Perceptual and Motor Skills Aug 2020Rhythmic entrainment occurs when an auditory rhythm drives an internal movement oscillator, thus providing a continuous time reference that improves temporal and spatial...
Rhythmic entrainment occurs when an auditory rhythm drives an internal movement oscillator, thus providing a continuous time reference that improves temporal and spatial movement parameters. Entrainment processes and outcomes are well known for adults, but research is lacking for infants who might benefit from diagnosis and treatment of irregular rhythms within biological, sensorimotor, cognitive, and social domains. The present study used a combination of inertial measurement units and custom-made software to determine the amount, tempo, and regularity of movement in 28 infants aged 6-10 months while they were exposed to silence, an irregular rhythmic cue, or a regular rhythmic cue with tempo changes. We also assessed changes in the infants' movement parameters following a one-week rhythm training protocol. While results revealed no significant effect of auditory condition on amount or tempo of movement, infant movement was significantly more regular when infants were exposed to 120 bpm (beats per minute) than to an irregular rhythmic cue or a 10% faster rhythmic cue (132 bpm). Infants showed no notable changes in movement amount, tempo, or regularity following one week of training involving auditory and physical rhythm. Overall, infants seem to engage in spontaneous movements with or without auditory rhythm but may not show tempo sensitivity through their movements. Increased movement regularity suggests that 120 bpm may be a preferred tempo for infants, at which they are more likely to demonstrate well-timed movements that may reflect interval entrainment. Infants' auditory-motor systems appear not to respond to a 1-week rhythm training protocol.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Auditory Perception; Female; Humans; Infant; Male; Movement; Music; Periodicity
PubMed: 32389057
DOI: 10.1177/0031512520922642 -
Sports Medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) Jul 2015Microtechnology has allowed sport scientists to understand the locomotor demands of various sports. While wearable global positioning technology has been used to... (Review)
Review
BACKGROUND
Microtechnology has allowed sport scientists to understand the locomotor demands of various sports. While wearable global positioning technology has been used to quantify the locomotor demands of sporting activities, microsensors (i.e. accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers) embedded within the units also have the capability to detect sport-specific movements.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to determine the extent to which microsensors (also referred to as inertial measurement units and microelectromechanical sensors) have been utilised in quantifying sport-specific movements.
METHODS
A systematic review of the use of microsensors and associated terms to evaluate sport-specific movements was conducted; permutations of the terms used included alternate names of the various technologies used, their applications and different applied environments. Studies for this review were published between 2008 and 2014 and were identified through a systematic search of six electronic databases: Academic Search Complete, CINAHL, PsycINFO, PubMed, SPORTDiscus, and Web of Science. Articles were required to have used athlete-mounted sensors to detect sport-specific movements (e.g. rugby union tackle) rather than sensors mounted to equipment and monitoring generic movement patterns.
RESULTS
A total of 2395 studies were initially retrieved from the six databases and 737 results were removed as they were duplicates, review articles or conference abstracts. After screening titles and abstracts of the remaining papers, the full text of 47 papers was reviewed, resulting in the inclusion of 28 articles that met the set criteria around the application of microsensors for detecting sport-specific movements. Eight articles addressed the use of microsensors within individual sports, team sports provided seven results, water sports provided eight articles, and five articles addressed the use of microsensors in snow sports. All articles provided evidence of the ability of microsensors to detect sport-specific movements. Results demonstrated varying purposes for the use of microsensors, encompassing the detection of movement and movement frequency, the identification of movement errors and the assessment of forces during collisions.
CONCLUSION
This systematic review has highlighted the use of microsensors to detect sport-specific movements across a wide range of individual and team sports. The ability of microsensors to capture sport-specific movements emphasises the capability of this technology to provide further detail on athlete demands and performance. However, there was mixed evidence on the ability of microsensors to quantify some movements (e.g. tackling within rugby union, rugby league and Australian rules football). Given these contrasting results, further research is required to validate the ability of wearable microsensors containing accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers to detect tackles in collision sports, as well as other contact events such as the ruck, maul and scrum in rugby union.
Topics: Athletes; Humans; Movement; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; Sports
PubMed: 25834998
DOI: 10.1007/s40279-015-0332-9 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... Sep 2023Movement control is critical for successful interaction with our environment. However, movement does not occur in complete isolation of sensation, and this is...
Movement control is critical for successful interaction with our environment. However, movement does not occur in complete isolation of sensation, and this is particularly true of eye movements. Here, we show that the neuronal eye movement commands emitted by the superior colliculus (SC), a structure classically associated with oculomotor control, encompass a robust visual sensory representation of eye movement targets. Thus, similar saccades toward different images are associated with different saccade-related "motor" bursts. Such sensory tuning in SC saccade motor commands appeared for all image manipulations that we tested, from simple visual features to real-life object images, and it was also strongest in the most motor neurons in the deeper collicular layers. Visual-feature discrimination performance in the motor commands was also stronger than in visual responses. Comparing SC motor command feature discrimination performance to that in the primary visual cortex during steady-state gaze fixation revealed that collicular motor bursts possess a reliable perisaccadic sensory representation of the peripheral saccade target's visual appearance, exactly when retinal input is expected to be most uncertain. Our results demonstrate that SC neuronal movement commands likely serve a fundamentally sensory function.
Topics: Movement; Eye Movements; Motor Neurons; Saccades; Discrimination, Psychological
PubMed: 37695898
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2305759120 -
Methods in Molecular Biology (Clifton,... 2023Chloroflexus is a thermophilic, filamentous, gliding bacterium. Its multicellular filaments of several hundred micrometer length move straightforward at a speed of...
Chloroflexus is a thermophilic, filamentous, gliding bacterium. Its multicellular filaments of several hundred micrometer length move straightforward at a speed of approximately 1-3 μm/s and occasionally reverse the moving direction. In liquid media, filaments glide on each other to form cell aggregates without tight adhesion. The molecular machinery on the cell surface that forces the gliding movement has not yet been identified. Here, we describe the cultivation methods to characterize the gliding motility of Chlroflexus and the microscopic assays to determine its gliding speed, reversal frequency, and cell-surface movements.
Topics: Chloroflexus; Movement; Bacteria; Cell Membrane; Cell Movement
PubMed: 36842132
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3060-0_32 -
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics Oct 2021Examining eye-movement behavior during visual search is an increasingly popular approach for gaining insights into the moment-to-moment processing that takes place when... (Review)
Review
Examining eye-movement behavior during visual search is an increasingly popular approach for gaining insights into the moment-to-moment processing that takes place when we look for targets in our environment. In this tutorial review, we describe a set of pitfalls and considerations that are important for researchers - both experienced and new to the field - when engaging in eye-movement and visual search experiments. We walk the reader through the research cycle of a visual search and eye-movement experiment, from choosing the right predictions, through to data collection, reporting of methodology, analytic approaches, the different dependent variables to analyze, and drawing conclusions from patterns of results. Overall, our hope is that this review can serve as a guide, a talking point, a reflection on the practices and potential problems with the current literature on this topic, and ultimately a first step towards standardizing research practices in the field.
Topics: Eye Movements; Humans; Movement
PubMed: 34089167
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-021-02326-w -
Journal of Neurophysiology Sep 2021On average, we redirect our gaze with a frequency at about 3 Hz. In real life, gaze shifts consist of eye and head movements. Much research has focused on how the...
On average, we redirect our gaze with a frequency at about 3 Hz. In real life, gaze shifts consist of eye and head movements. Much research has focused on how the accuracy of eye movements is monitored and calibrated. By contrast, little is known about how head movements remain accurate. I wondered whether serial dependencies between artificially induced errors in head movement targeting and the immediately following head movement might recalibrate movement accuracy. I also asked whether head movement targeting errors would influence visual localization. To this end, participants wore a head-mounted display and performed head movements to targets, which were displaced as soon as the start of the head movement was detected. I found that target displacements influenced head movement amplitudes in the same trial, indicating that participants could adjust their movement online to reach the new target location. However, I also found serial dependencies between the target displacement in trial -1 and head movements amplitudes in the following trial . I did not find serial dependencies between target displacements and visuomotor localization. The results reveal that serial dependencies recalibrate head-movement accuracy. Head movements are recalibrated by serial dependencies by errors between consecutive trials. Head movements are subject to a regression of the average target location.
Topics: Adult; Eye Movements; Female; Head Movements; Humans; Male; Psychomotor Performance; Sensorimotor Cortex; Visual Perception
PubMed: 34259049
DOI: 10.1152/jn.00231.2021 -
Cell Reports Jul 2018Our sensorimotor system appears to be influenced by the recent history of our movements. Repeating movements toward a particular direction is known to have a dramatic...
Our sensorimotor system appears to be influenced by the recent history of our movements. Repeating movements toward a particular direction is known to have a dramatic effect on involuntary movements elicited by cortical stimulation-a phenomenon that has been termed use-dependent plasticity. However, analogous effects of repetition on behavior have proven elusive. Here, we show that movement repetition enhances the generation of similar movements in the future by reducing the time required to select and prepare the repeated movement. We further show that this reaction time advantage for repeated movements is attributable to more rapid, but still flexible, preparation of the repeated movement rather than anticipation and covert advance preparation of the previously repeated movement. Our findings demonstrate a powerful and beneficial effect of movement repetition on response preparation, which may represent a behavioral counterpart to use-dependent plasticity effects in primary motor cortex.
Topics: Female; Humans; Male; Movement; Psychomotor Performance; Reaction Time
PubMed: 30044977
DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2018.06.097 -
Motor Control Apr 2021Investigations of behavior and control of voluntary stereotyped rhythmic movement contribute to the enhancement of motor function and performance of disabled, sick,... (Review)
Review
Investigations of behavior and control of voluntary stereotyped rhythmic movement contribute to the enhancement of motor function and performance of disabled, sick, injured, healthy, and exercising humans. The present article presents examples of unprompted alteration of freely chosen movement rate during voluntary stereotyped rhythmic movements. The examples, in the form of both increases and decreases of movement rate, are taken from activities of cycling, finger tapping, and locomotion. It is described that, for example, strength training, changed power output, repeated bouts, and changed locomotion speed can elicit an unprompted alteration of freely chosen movement rate. The discussion of the examples is based on a tripartite interplay between descending drive, rhythm-generating spinal neural networks, and sensory feedback, as well as terminology from dynamic systems theory.
Topics: Exercise; Humans; Locomotion; Movement; Resistance Training; Stereotyped Behavior
PubMed: 33883299
DOI: 10.1123/mc.2020-0049 -
Orthopadie (Heidelberg, Germany) Aug 2023Rheumatic diseases in childhood and adolescence like juvenile idiopathic arthritis can cause movement disorders due to pain, swelling and limited range of motion. This... (Review)
Review
Rheumatic diseases in childhood and adolescence like juvenile idiopathic arthritis can cause movement disorders due to pain, swelling and limited range of motion. This article describes different possibilities and results of movement analysis for rheumatic diseases. The influence of JIA on specific movements in individual joints and complex movements such as gait is examined. The results of gait analyses show a great influence of the disease on spatiotemporal parameters such as gait speed, cadence and stride length, on joint angles during walking and on torques and forces. Furthermore, the importance of gait analysis for estimating the efficacy of interventions like intra-articular steroids is described. This article provides a summary of current studies on the effects of rheumatic diseases on movement disorders in children and adolescents, as well as an outlook on the increasing importance of movement analysis for therapy monitoring and optimisation.
Topics: Humans; Child; Adolescent; Rheumatology; Gait; Walking; Rheumatic Diseases; Movement Disorders
PubMed: 37391675
DOI: 10.1007/s00132-023-04406-1