Physiology of Voluntary Movement

在实验室里，许多人致力于理解意志的生理学。 这包括愿意做出一个运动的感觉和代理的感觉，你对已经发生的运动负责。 我们一直在努力设计改进的技术，以获得这些主观事件的时间的定量测量。 为了确定大脑的哪些区域在进行自愿运动时被激活，我们开发了一种MRI兼容的数据手套，受试者在扫描仪中进行手部运动时会戴上它。 受试者将能够实时查看他们的动作，他们在实验期间收到的视觉反馈将有所不同，以模拟不同程度的自愿控制。 还将进行相关EEG研究。 我们正试图确定脑电图和脑磁图的方法，以预测在真实的时间，当有人要移动，以及他们将作出什么运动。我们优化了预测的特征和分类方法。在特定的实验中，我们试图预测运动是用右手还是左手，或者某人是否会将右手移到左边或右边的空间场。 这项工作应该与脑机接口的使用相关，并且有助于理解意志的生理学。 运动技能的学习是一个重要的功能。 我们一直在研究动作是如何成为自动的，也就是说，在学习阶段，不需要太多的注意力投入到一个动作上。 自动性的另一个尚未被研究的特征是，当注意力集中在自动阶段时，运动是如何恶化的。 我们将用功能磁共振成像、经颅磁刺激和脑电图来观察这些现象。 我们将使用这些研究中获得的信息来调查局灶性手肌张力障碍患者。 做出选择性运动的能力，特别是单个手指的运动，是人类的一项重要功能。 运动系统的解剖学和生理学特征使得这很困难，因为大多数神经元（除了脊髓和脑干中的α运动神经元）不是肌肉特异性的。 我们的假设是，选择性运动动作必须需要抑制机制，我们正在寻求理解他们使用TMS。 我们把这个过程称为环绕抑制，因为不打算用于选择性动作的肌肉需要被抑制。 皮层中的许多抑制过程，如短皮层内抑制和短传入抑制，可以在静止和运动时进行分析。 这些研究应该揭示哪些机制是负责周围抑制。

A number of efforts in the laboratory are devoted to understanding the physiology of volition. This includes the sense of willing to make a movement and the sense of agency, that you are responsible for the movement that has occurred. We have been trying to devise improved techniques to get quantitative measures of the timing of these subjective events. To determine which areas of the brain are activated with the sense of agency when making voluntary movement, we have developed an MRI-compatible dataglove which subjects will wear while making hand movements in the scanner. Subjects will be able to view their movements in real-time and the visual feedback they receive will be varied during the experiment to simulate different degrees of voluntary control. Correlative EEG studies will also be done. We are trying to determine EEG and MEG methods to predict in real time when someone is going to move and what movement they will make. We have optimized features and classification methods for the prediction. In specific experiments, we are trying to predict whether movement will be with the right or left hand or whether someone will move their right hand into the left or right spatial field. The work should be relevant for use with a brain-computer interface, as well as being useful to understand the physiology of volition. The learning of motor skills is an important function. We have been studying how movements become automatic, that is, the stage of learning where much attention does not need to be devoted to an action. Another feature of automaticity, that has not been studied, is how movements deteriorate at the automatic stage when attention is devoted to them. We will look at these phenomena with fMRI, TMS and EEG. We will use information learned in these studies to investigate patients with focal hand dystonia. The ability to make selective movements, particularly of individual fingers, is a critical human function. Anatomical and physiological features of the motor system make this difficult since most neurons (other than alpha motoneurons in the spinal cord and brainstem) are not muscle specific. Our hypothesis is that selective motor action must require inhibitory mechanisms, and we are seeking to understand them using TMS. We refer to this process as surround inhibition, as muscles not intended for the selective action need to be inhibited. Many inhibitory processes in the cortex, such as short intracortical inhibition and short afferent inhibition, can be analyzed at rest and with movement. Such studies should reveal which mechanisms are responsible for surround inhibition.