Eye-hand coordination: Effects of age, sex, and experience on brain and behaviour

这项研究的主要目的是了解控制自主运动的基本神经机制。其目的是描述熟练的视觉引导肢体运动在大脑活动和行为方面与年龄、性别和经验相关的差异。四个相关但不同的项目构成了这一调查的总路线。项目1将考察与年龄、性别和经验相关的技能表现和认知运动整合的差异，以及这些差异的神经基础。我们之前的资助仅记录了年龄、性别和技能水平对协调发展的影响，并开始研究当认知因素包括在内时，大脑如何控制熟练的运动。我们将在这些发现的基础上，研究这些因素如何影响认知-运动整合，这是一项对日常生活和许多工作/体育活动都至关重要的技能，但其发展从未被记录在案。与这项研究相关，我们还将探索精英表演者和非精英表演者眼球和手臂运动空间方向分离的行为后果背后的神经机制。这个项目将提供大脑如何根据性别和经验以不同的方式发展对基于规则的熟练运动的控制的基本信息。另外三个项目将使用更深入的运动心理物理方法，深入了解专家行动控制的性质，以及这些人群中与年龄和性别有关的差异。项目2将通过将非运动员与精英水平的男性和女性运动员进行比较，来考察增强运动学习的机制。在项目3中，我们将继续研究大脑网络中与性别相关的差异的神经基础，以实现协调行动。我们之前的工作表明，在眼手协调任务中，运动前皮质和顶叶皮质的大脑活动模式存在性别差异。然而，目前对这些不同大脑活动模式的功能意义的了解非常有限。在这里，我们将检查特定的神经过程，这些过程是观察到的大脑活动总体模式中与性别相关的差异的基础。最后，我们将研究如何使用不同的协调措施来预测优秀运动员在比赛中的表现。这一系列研究将产生有关大脑和行为的知识，这些知识可以转化为工业(人因工程)、生物医学工程(远程机器人和医疗设备设计)以及专业运动训练和教练部门。从根本上说，这项研究将促进我们对我们如何与周围世界的物体互动的理解。

The broad aim of this research is to understand the fundamental neural mechanisms for controlling voluntary movement. The objectives are to characterize the age-, sex- and experience-related differences in both brain activity and behaviour for skilled visually-guided limb movements. Four related but distinct projects comprise this general line of inquiry. Project 1 will look at the age-, sex- and experience-related differences in skilled performance and cognitive motor integration, and the neural underpinnings to these differences. Our previous grant documented the effects of age, sex, and skill level on coordination development alone, and began looking at how the brain controls skilled movement when an element of cognition is included. We will build upon these findings by examining how such factors affect cognitive-motor integration a skill crucial to both daily living and many work/sport activities yet whose development has never been documented. Related to this study, we will also explore the neural mechanisms underlying the behavioral consequences of decoupling the spatial directions of eye and arm movements in elite and non-elite performers. This project will provide fundamental information about how the brain develops control for rule-based skilled movement differently as a function of sex and experience. Three further projects will provide insight into the nature of movement control in experts, as well as age and sex-related differences within these populations, using a more in-depth motor psychophysical approach. Project 2 will look at the mechanisms underlying augmented motor learning by comparing non-athletes to elite-level male and female athletes. In Project 3 we will continue our research into the neural underpinning of sex-related differences in brain networks for coordinated action. Our previous work has shown that there are sex-related differences in patterns of brain activity in the premotor and parietal cortices during eye-hand co-ordination tasks. However, there is currently only a very limited understanding of the functional significance of these different patterns of brain activity. Here we will examine the specific neurological processes that underlie observed sex-related differences in overall patterns of brain activity. Finally, we will examine how one can use different coordination measures to predict performance in elite athletes in competition. This line of inquiry will generate knowledge about brain and behaviour that can translate to the industrial (human factors engineering), biomedical engineering (telerobotic and medical equipment design), and professional sport training & coaching sectors. Fundamentally, this research will advance our understanding of how we interact with objects in the world around us.