FMRI STUDIES OF MOTOR CONTROL AND MOTOR LEARNING

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Coordination of movements across different parts of the body is an essential aspect of human motor performance. The proposed research will focus on the neural mechanisms involved in the acquisition and consolidation of coordinative motor skills. Previous work on motor learning has mainly focused on unimanual actions. While this research has revealed important mechanisms of learning, the focus on isolated unimanual movements has left the question of how the brain accomplishes coordination between different limbs largely unexplored. Coordination is ubiquitous: For example, many of our manual actions are performed with both hands. Often one hand serves a supportive role by holding an object that is manipulated by the other hand. However, holding is not a passive act. Rather, in order to maintain stability of the object, the supporting hand must anticipate the forces produced by the other hand and counteract them. We will study the learning of this type of coordinative behavior by generating a situation in which an action of one hand (a button press) leads to a predictable perturbation of the other hand. With training, the brain will learn to predict the effect of action of one hand on the stability of the other hand, i.e., coordination. To study the neural basis of this coordination, we draw upon two important principles that have been observed in motor control: First, learning is driven by an error signal, i.e. signals about what went wrong in the last movement. Second, after initial stages of learning, consolidation of motor skills is accompanied by a neural change, despite only subtle changes in the overt behavior. Understanding of how these mechanisms are brought to bear in coordination learning constitutes the first step in improving the diagnostic and treatment of coordination deficits following stroke and neuro-degenerative diseases.