Multisensory contributions to the planning and control of movements to to somatosensory targets

我们日常的许多动作和手势都涉及到位于我们身体上的位置的运动。这些动作包括：挠鼻子痒，擦去额头上的汗水，鼓掌时一起鼓掌。最近的工作，包括我自己的大部分工作，发现对身体位置的移动，通常被称为体感目标，与对外部物体(即视觉目标)的移动有不同的规划和控制。例如，我发现，如果体感目标的位置是使用视觉信息得出的，那么在计划体感目标的运动时，与视觉运动处理相关的大脑区域比视觉目标更活跃。此外，我发现，当使用非视觉来源的信息(例如，本体感觉和触觉信息)来确定目标位置时，基于感觉反馈的对体感目标位置的修正比对视觉目标的修正发生得更快、更准确。综上所述，这些结果表明，我们获得体感目标位置的方式(例如，状态估计)可以影响运动规划和控制过程中的感觉信息处理。拟议的研究计划将极大地扩展我之前的工作，并检查有助于规划和控制到体感目标的运动的状态估计的因素。关键是，拟议的工作将朝着我的长期目标--了解人类感觉运动控制过程中多感觉整合背后的神经和行为机制--而建立。拟议的研究计划将结合运动学和神经科学的创新方法，研究视觉环境(项目1)或运动诱发的肌肉损伤(项目2)是否影响感觉信息如何被用于计划到达体感目标的运动。对于希望为有感觉缺陷的人设计更好的互动环境的行业开发人员，以及对为疲惫时必须执行复杂任务的个人设计培训计划感兴趣的教育工作者来说，这些知识将是至关重要的。项目3将结合新的机器人发起的扰动和大脑刺激，直接探测基于反馈的对体感目标的运动控制所涉及的神经网络。这个项目将对人类运动控制的机制产生关键的见解，并将有助于进一步开发神经系统功能的模型。总体而言，这项研究的结果将影响广泛的行业，并将有助于改善加拿大社会。最重要的是，拟议的研究计划还将为不同的HQP群体提供强有力的培训环境。学员将学习心理学、生理学和神经科学研究技能的结合，这将使他们在学术和行业职位上都具有竞争力。

Many of our daily actions and gestures involve movements to positions located on our own body. These movements include: scratching an itchy nose, wiping away the sweat from our forehead, and clapping our hands together when applauding. Recent work, including much of my own, has found that movements to body positions, commonly referred to as somatosensory targets, are planned and controlled differently than movements to external objects (i.e., visual targets). For example, I found that brain regions associated with visuomotor processing were more active when planning movements to somatosensory targets than visual targets if somatosensory target positions were derived using visual information. Furthermore, I found that when information from non-visual sources (e.g., proprioceptive and tactile information) was used to determine target location, sensory feedback-based corrections to somatosensory target positions occurred faster, and were more accurate, than corrections to visual targets. Taken together, these results suggest that the way we derive somatosensory target positions (e.g., the state estimates) can affect sensory information processing during movement planning and control. The proposed research program will greatly extend my previous work and examine the factors that contribute to the state estimates for the planning and control of movements to somatosensory targets. Critically, the proposed work will build toward my long-term goal of understanding the neural and behavioural mechanisms underlying multisensory integration during human sensorimotor control.  The proposed research program will combine innovative methods from kinesiology and neuroscience to examine whether the visual environment (Project 1) or exercise-induced muscle damage (Project 2) affects how sensory information is used to plan movements to somatosensory targets. This knowledge will be critical to industry developers looking to design better interactive environments for people with sensory deficits and for educators interested in designing training programs for individuals that must perform complex tasks while fatigued. Project 3 will combine novel robot-initiated perturbations and brain stimulation to directly probe the neural networks involved in the feedback-based control of movements to somatosensory targets. This project will yield key insights into the mechanisms involved in human motor control and will help to further develop models of nervous system function. Overall, the findings of this research will impact a wide range of industries and will help to improve Canadian society. Most importantly, the proposed research program will also provide a strong training environment for a diverse group of HQP. Trainees will learn a combination of psychological, physiological, and neuroscience research skills that will make them competitive for both academic and industry positions.